MLCA girls, boys beat Warden

MOSES LAKE - The Moses Lake Christian Academy (MLCA) girls basketball team turned back a determined Warden squad, beating the Lady Cougars 51-41 on the Lions home court last night.

McKenna Walker pumped in 23 points, Madison Yamane added 11, and Madie Tudor, back from an injury that held her out of the past few games, finished with seven points to help lead the way for the Lady Lions.

"It's nice to get a win," coach Bryce McPartland said. "We played ugly and didn't respond well to Warden's pressure, but we pulled it out."

MLCA jumped out to a 13-8 lead after the first quarter and took a 32-13 lead at intermission. Walker led the Lions with 14 points through the first 16 minutes of action and Yamane added eight of her 11 points.

The Cougars got on track in the second half of play, out scoring MLCA 28-19 to make a game of it, but couldn't get any closer than 10 points and lost the contest 51-41.

"We kind of backed off in the second half and I am not quite sure why," McPartland said. "I think the players were content with the job the did in the first half. It's good to win even when we are not playing that well, but we can't continue to play like we did tonight and expect to have a lot of success."

The Lady Lions will get a chance to prove they are better than what they exhibited last night when the take on TC Prep in the final round of their Christmas Tournament tonight at 6 p.m.

MLCA 44

Warden 38

MOSES LAKE - Connor Webb had 12 points and six steals, and Joe Timofeyev added 11 points and six rebounds to lead Moses Lake Christian Academy (MLCA) to a 44-38  win over Warden on the Lions home court last night.

"It wasn't pretty, but we'll always take a win," coach Duke Wood said. "We haven't played a game in two weeks, so I think we were a bit rusty tonight."

The Lions were up 16-14 at the end of the first quarter, but were out scored 9-6 in the second and trailed 23-22 at the half.

"We started out great," Wood said. "But we kind of got out of our game in the second quarter."

Down by one a point at the break, the Lions were in the thick of things. But Wood did remind the guys in the locker room to stop shooting themselves in the foot with all the "silly mistakes" they were making that allowed Warden to stay in the ball game.

"I told them were were fine, but we needed to cut down on the turnovers," he said. "I think we had 11 in the first half of play."

The Lions were able to cut the turnovers in half in the second half, while out scoring the Cougars 20-15 to come away with the win.

"We stepped it up defensively," Wood said. "But we missed too many front ends of 1-and-1 situations from the free throw line. Luckily that didn't come back to hurt us."

By virtue of the win, MLCA plays Wahluke in the final round of the MLCA Christmas Tournament at home tonight. Game time is set for 7:30 p.m.

"Wahluke is a scrappy team," Wood said. "But they play our type of tempo and we match up well with them, so this should be a very competitive game."