Big Bend women lose first game of season

MOSES LAKE — There’s a reason why they play a bunch of these games.

To borrow a John Prine line, “... One day you’re up, the next you’re down, half an inch of water, that’s the way the world goes round.”

Clackamas Community College coach Jim Martineau said his bigs didn’t do much the night before in a 80-71 loss to Yakima Valley. But it was a different story in the Cougars 95-76 victory over previously unbeaten Big Bend Saturday night at DeVries Activity Center.

“(Yakima) has a bunch of little guards. They shoot pretty good and they work well together,” he said. “Our bigs never did get into it. I thought we had whole lot more energy tonight.”

Six-foot Cougars freshman Landy Williams was 10 of 15 from the floor and finished with 21 points and five rebounds in taking over the inside game. Combined with CJ Buckley, a 5-7 sophomore from Hillsboro, Ore., who scored 13 of her game-high 25 points in the second half. The Vikings just seemed a step slow all night.

“We need to take better care of the ball. Every time we turned the ball over, that’s one more point we lose,” said Preston Wilks, who’s the winningest coach in women’s program history. “We have to sit down and focus as a coaching staff and see how we can better do that.

“I would say we’re no different than the team last year as far as chemistry goes. We just need to play harder and play faster. I thought Clackamas came in here hungrier than we were and they played a lot harder than us.”

Clackamas outscored Big Bend in the paint 54-26 and held the slight edge, 14-12, on second-chance points. The Vikings finally picked up the shooting percentage a little bit in the second half, shooting 38.9 percent from the floor. But they were just 11.1 percent (1-9) from 3-point range.

The good news is that the Vikings outrebounded the Cougars 45-33. But the bad news is they had 15 of their 21 turnovers in the second half when they were in full throttle catch-up mode.

Hannah Wilson and Kelsey Sorenson scored 15 points apiece to lead the Vikings. Wilson made it a double-double with a game-high 15 rebounds, 10 on the offensive glass. Sorenson, a 5-11 freshman out of Price, Utah, had nine boards. So a big percentage of the Big Bend scoring (30 points) and rebounding (19 rebounds) came from two players. The Viking bench combined for just 15 points.

“There’s things we can’t control and we didn’t shoot well tonight. You can’t be upset about that, that’s just basketball,” Wilks said. “But as far as the way we played defense, we were disappointed in our effort. We lacked toughness. We lacked tenacity. We just lacked energy.”