Moses Lake relaxed heading into second meeting with Sunnyside

MOSES LAKE — Inspired by the creativity of the Monmouth bench players, Taylor Stephens, Alexya Sandmann, Maggie Strom, Morgan Yamane and Mikayla Chavez pantomimed a rowboat on the sideline while the “captain” signaled three points after Jamie Loera canned a deep jump shot during practice.

The quintet had been eagerly awaiting a chance to try out the choreography and Loera obliged.

The loose yet competitive atmosphere of practice has helped No. 2 Moses Lake stay relaxed with the biggest game of the season looming.

“I think it’s important that we realize this is a game and they are teenage kids so we’ve got to keep things fun and light and we’ve got to joke with the kids, but at the same time they’re dialed in and they know when it’s time to be serious,” head coach Matt Strophy said. “Especially when we go to film now they’ll mentally get themselves dialed in because we know what we’re doing on the court. We’ll make our adjustments mentally as we watch film.”

The aforementioned game is at Sunnyside, a place where Moses Lake has had limited success. Last season, the Grizzlies ended the Chiefs’ 11-0 start and in 2013-14 won both meetings in their home gym.

Strophy coached his team to play through contact at Wednesday’s practice and to not expect to get bailed out with a foul call.

That extra stress has caused an up-tick in turnovers for Moses Lake in the past.

“They have a great crowd,” Strophy said. “They have a nice facility, but it’s a loud facility so when their crowd is loud it’s hard to hear and be heard and so that’s definitely an advantage and we need to prepare ourselves as if we’re not going to get a call. We have to be stronger than we normally would be, we have to be smarter on defense than we might normally be just in case.”

In the first meeting of the season both teams were ranked in the Associated Press poll and for the first 13 minutes it was a competitive game. Then Moses Lake closed the first half on an 9-0 run and scored 30 points in the third quarter to win going away, 59-33.

“We have a stronger defense this year I think than last year or the past couple years at least and we work a lot better together than we have,” Jessie Loera said. “I think we can all stay mentally tough together down there just from what I’ve been seeing this season.”

Moses Lake’s suffocating defense has given up a league low 31.7 points per game. So far in the second round of CBBN games Moses Lake has held its opponents to lower scoring than the first meeting, except for Eisenhower who scored 16 points after totaling 15 on Dec. 19.

The insertion of Taylor Yamane, an all-league sprinter, into the starting lineup and the development of Abby Rathbun and Jessica Olson on the interior has allowed the Chiefs to clamp down at times throughout the season.

“She’s (Yamane) fast and quick and smart and so when we give her direction she can follow it,” Strophy said. “The last couple of weeks we’ve been playing our teams twice so we know what’s coming even more so we can do a better job than the first time of planning and prepping for them and so I think our defense is better because we know even more so what’s coming.”

With a win on Friday, Moses Lake will clinch at least a share of the Columbia Basin Big Nine league championship. Although the accolade would be nice, the Chiefs have made it clear they are not in the sharing mood this season after two straight years of being co-champions.

“Just take it game by game,” Jamie Loera said. “We’re in one game, we focus on that and then just go to the next game.”