Down to five, The Phoenix fall

MOSES LAKE — Ready to begin play at 6 p.m. Thursday, the Columbia Basin Secondary School girls’ basketball team were given the news they would have to wait to tip off.

That’s because Cascade Christian out of Wenatchee ran into bus troubles and would be almost an hour late.

Once the game begin one fact had not changed.

The Phoenix were still down to only five players.

The host Phoenix did what they could but still fell to vehicularly-challenged Cascade Christian 52-7 in the 1B North Central Washington opener for Columbia Basin Secondary (0-3, 0-1).

“The five of girls fought the entire game and didn’t give up,” Phoenix coach Ashlee Holten said. “They fought for every loose ball and stayed positive throughout the whole game with each other. The referees even commented about how hard they were playing even without subs.”

Holten’s squad were down four players due to injuries and ineligibility due to grades.

A lack of depth also made it harder for the Phoenix to make up an 18-4 deficit after the first quarter.

“We always are looking at our bench saying, ‘yeah we’re looking at you to play,’” Holten said. “We need our subs and a full team because I know we’d be able to play a full game of man-to-man defense and we would be more competitive.”

Tiffany Oliver led the Phoenix with five points.

Still the first year of the program, despite consecutive lopsided losses following a two-point defeat in their opener, remains in a positive state of mind.

“We’re learning every game and we get better fundamentally each time,” Holten said. “We don’t get called for a lot of fundamental errors but we need to shoot the ball better.”

While they continue to improve on the court, off of it all the bug-a-boos that have thrown the team out of whack should be rectified and a full squad is expected to take the floor in the first week of January when they get back at it.

“We’re going to be very competitive,” Holten said. “Our girls are playing very hard so we’ll have a better hang of playing the game and we’ll have a full team when it really counts.”

ACH 69, Soap Lake 15

COULEE CITY — The Warriors express continues on as the Almira/Coulee-Hartline girls basketball team ran its record to 5-0 Thursday night with a resounding 69-15 win over Soap Lake yesterday evening.

ACH (5-0) broke out fast for the second consecutive game to post a fourth resounding victory on the young season.

“We emphasize to the team to play at our level,” Warriors’ assistant coach Katie Stephens said. “We don’t want their game to become sloppy. We want clean basketball and we’re trying to work on that. They’ve done a good job.”

Soap Lake couldn’t mount any form of challenge, falling behind 18-4 at the end of the first quarter and then 41-6 at halftime.

ACH was led by Sarah Gloyn who knocked in 18 points, while Nikki Osborne contributed nine points and 10 rebounds.

Carlee Martin and Shelby Streeter added six rebounds each to help the Warriors’ balanced attack.

“All of our girls got a lot of minutes and we got to work on some things we needed tweaking offensively and all the girls did well,” Stephens said.

Beatriz Blanco led the Eagles (0-4) with five points,

Riverview 55, Royal 26

RIVERVIEW — A trip to Riverview didn’t help the Royal Lady Knights keep their momentum from Saturday’s big win as they fell at Riverview 55-26 on Thursday night.

Royal (1-5, 0-1) played without Maggie Leal, the squad’s leading rebounder and second-leading scorer.

“Too many turnovers, not enough rebounds, and obviously not enough offense,” Royal coach Brock Anderson said. “We knew it was going to be tough without Maggie but we could still do stuff like play defense. We’ll wether the storm and hopefully we’ll be okay.”

Leslie Brown led Royal with 14 points and nine rebounds.