Every avenue was closed Friday night for the Kentwood High girls basketball team.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Whether it was a Kylie Huerta 3-point attempt, a Liz Mills baseline jumper or a hard drive in the paint by Courtney Johnson, ninth-ranked Lake Stevens had an answer.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Behind a balancing scoring attack in which four girls reached double figures, the Vikings turned back the Conquerors 61-44 in a Class 4A state playoff game at Jackson High in Mill Creek.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“(Lake Stevens) really played physically,” said Kentwood coach Dean Montzingo. “They bottled up everything we did.”<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Conquerors (19-7) hung with the Vikings (21-4) through the first two quarters as they went into halftime trailing 30-26.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The wheels came off for Kentwood in the third quarter, when the Conquerors failed to convert a single bucket from the field, resulting in a 47-31 deficit going into the final eight minutes.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
With the loss, Kentwood will play Edmonds-Woodway at 1 p.m. Saturday at Jackson High in a loser-out game. The winner will advance to the Elite Eight next weekend at the Tacoma Dome.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Trailing by four entering the third quarter, the Vikings went on an 8-0 run to take a 38-26 advantage. Johnson then ended a 3-minute Kentwood run without a score by converting 1 of 2 at the line. Lake Stevens, however, proceeded to rip off three more quick buckets, pushing its lead to 44-27.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Conquerors couldn’t find a groove from the outside and couldn’t find a lane to the hoop on the inside much due to a tenacious Lake Stevens defense.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
“We just couldn’t find our rhythm,” Montzingo said.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Conquerors shot just 35.4 percent from the field (17 of 48) and turned the ball over 19 times.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Huerta led Kentwood with 17 points while Mills added 10.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Meghan Warbis led Lake Stevens with 16 points followed by Brooke Pahukoa (14), Brittany Pahukoa (12) and Katie Goodard (10).<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Every avenue was closed Friday night for the Kentwood High girls basketball team. Whether it was a Kylie Huerta 3-point attempt, a Liz Mills baseline jumper or a hard drive in the paint by Courtney Johnson, ninth-ranked Lake Stevens had an answer. Behind a balancing scoring attack in which four girls reached double figures, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":106,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-3647","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647"}],"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=3647"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3647\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3647"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3647"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3647"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3647"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}