The 3-point well ran dry for the Kentridge High boys basketball team Thursday afternoon.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Just days after torching Arlington and Auburn with a barrage of 3-pointers in the opening two rounds of the Class 4A state tournament, the Chargers couldn’t buy a bucket down the stretch in a quarterfinal game against Gonzaga Prep.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Chris Sarbaugh scored a team-high 22 points and teammate Parker Kelly added 20, leading the Bullpups past the Chargers 72-60 at the Tacoma Dome.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kentridge, which connected on 28 of 50 3-point attempts in back-to-back wins to open the tournament, hit 7 of 20 Thursday afternoon, but was just 1 of 10 in the pivotal second half.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“They played tough defense and collapsed when we tried to penetrate with the ball,” said Kentridge star Gary Bell, who scored a team-high 22 points despite having few good looks at the basket. “We had been shooting the ball well. Today we really didn’t shoot that great … and that hindered us from playing good. When we shoot the ball, we can beat anybody.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kentridge hit on 21 of 53 shots (39.6 percent) for the game.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The loss drops Kentridge (20-9) into a consolation-round game against Puyallup (21-8) at 10:30 Friday morning. Puyallup lost to top-ranked Garfield 90-80. Kentridge lost to Puyallup 61-60 on Feb. 11 in a South Puget Sound League seeding game. Gonzaga Prep (21-3) moves on to play Garfield (23-3) at 5:30 p.m. Friday. If the Chargers win, they will play in the fourth-place game at 8 a.m. Saturday morning.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“We’ve still got another game tomorrow and have to come out hard,” Bell said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Chargers came out plenty hard Thursday afternoon as they took an 11-8 lead, a run that was highlighted by a pair of 3-pointers, one from Denzel Daniels and the other from Brendan Westendorf.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Kentridge’s lead grew to 17-12 after another Daniels 3-pointer with 1:07 remaining in the opening quarter. After the first quarter, however, Kentridge went on to hit just 4 of its next 20 3-point attempts.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Gonzaga Prep’s relentless defense was the difference, Kentridge coach Dave Jamison said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“That’s probably the most physical guard play I’ve seen,” he said. “They did a good job posting as well, getting the shots they wanted. They’re not tall and they’re not heavy, but they’re pretty strong.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Bullpups were on the brink of pulling away, leading 35-30 with 2:00 left in the half when Bell hit what would be his lone 3-pointer of the game, cutting the deficit to two. Westendorf followed with a 3-pointer and Daniels added an inside bucket, helping the Chargers go into halftime tied, 38-38. Daniels scored 10 points in the half, and finished with 12 for the game.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Gonzaga Prep ripped off an 11-4 run to open the third quarter to take a 51-44 lead. Scarbaugh scored six and Kelly added four on the run. None of the Bullpups’ field goals during the spurt came from outside.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Gonzaga Prep outscored Kentridge 20-12 in the third quarter. The Bullpups increased the defensive pressure during the quarter, when the Chargers went 0-for-3 from behind the stripe, connected on just three field goals and turned the ball over four times.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Chargers were unable to get any closer than seven points the rest of the afternoon.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“They’re good together as a team,” said Westendorf, who finished with 13 points. “They set screens for each other and move around and cut well and got a lot of open shots.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“They were just a little too physical for us and we got frustrated at the end.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The difference in the game was slowing down Bell, Gonzaga Prep coach Matty McIntyre said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“The key, I think, you’ve got to do something with Gary Bell. The guy’s very special,” the coach said. “Our kids battled and played their absolute tails off.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Bell, who was playing with a bruised hip, connected on 6 of 19 shots, including 1 of 7 from 3-point land, and was 9 of 12 from the line.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
None of his points, however, came easy.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“It’s not an excuse, but he got a thigh bruise the other day and couldn’t walk on Sunday,” Jamison said. “He took treatment on Monday and Wednesday … he wasn’t 100 percent, but I think he was moving OK. I give more credit to their defense.”<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The 3-point well ran dry for the Kentridge High boys basketball team Thursday afternoon.
\nJust days after torching Arlington and Auburn with a barrage of 3-pointers in the opening two rounds of the Class 4A state tournament, the Chargers couldn’t buy a bucket down the stretch in a quarterfinal game against Gonzaga Prep.
\nChris Sarbaugh scored a team-high 22 points and teammate Parker Kelly added 20, leading the Bullpups past the Chargers 72-60 at the Tacoma Dome.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":20779,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20778","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20778"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/106"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20778"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20778\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20779"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20778"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20778"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20778"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20778"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}