Holding court: Stoyan’s 42 points leads Soap Lake to win

WILSON CREEK – Soap Lake junior Pavlo Stoyan felt like he let his Soap Lake teammates down after fouling out of Thursday’s win over Bridgeport, so he followed that up with a 42-point outing in a 68-37 win over Wilson Creek on Friday night.

“It feels good after kind of disappointing my team and letting them down a bit yesterday,” Stoyan said. “It feels good to get back and get a win for them.”

The Eagles hit 12 shots from beyond the arc against the Devils, with Stoyan getting things started by hitting four three-pointers in the first quarter.

“He’s a knockdown shooter,” Soap Lake Head Coach Daniel Simon said. “He averaged 25 as a freshman, 20 as a sophomore and he’s got a little bit more weight on his shoulders this year after we graduated a couple of guys from that district championship game team last year.”

Junior Gio Campos, who hit five threes against Bridgeport, added another three on Friday night – as did junior Andrey Sushik, sophomore Kyle Ayers and sophomore Skylar White.

“It’s really contagious, if you see one guy popping off it seems like everybody’s going to hit a three sooner or later,” Stoyan said.

Simon and Stoyan both credited the team’s energy on Thursday carrying on into Friday, guiding the Eagles to a win.

“We always talk about energy is contagious, and so is shooting,” Simon said. “That’s one of those things we get really excited about – guy knocks down a three, next guy really comes out with confidence.”

Friday was the first time the Eagles had played back-to-back games so far this season.

“It’s tiring, but the energy from last game definitely helped a lot,” Stoyan said. “We were able to bring it into this game and start off hot.”

With an unsteady schedule, Simon believes that playing back-to-backs gives valuable experience to a team.

“I think it’s good experience,” Simon said. “You come into the regular season and you seem to have games in bursts, you might have a week or two without a game but then you’re going to have three in a week before you know it. I’m trying to get us to think that’s regular for us.”

Defensively, the Eagles powered their way through the Devils on 50-50 rebounds and used a fast-tempo attack to create Wilson Creek turnovers.

“It’s easy to get stagnant in a basketball game, especially when you’re playing man (defense),” Simon said. “We try to push the tempo, sometimes it’s traps and sometimes it’s playing extra-help defense. Just being active, it’s contagious.”

Soap Lake returns to the court on Monday at home against Waterville-Mansfield, and Wilson Creek plays at Pateros on Tuesday.

“I just think coming into league play we want to be firing on all cylinders,” Simon said. “We graduated some guys last year, and we’re trying to find our identity and figure out how we’re going to compete with these good teams in our league.”

Stoyan’s 42 points led the Eagles, followed by Campos with seven and Sushik with six. Junior Zane McMillan led Wilson Creek in scoring with 20 points.

Ian Bivona may be reached at ibivona@columbiabasinherald.com.

Box score:

Soap Lake 24-15-13-16 68

Wilson Creek 7-16-6-8 37