<\/a>Corey Tita looks for a teammate with a one-handed pass against Mount Si. Ben Ray \/ The Reporter<\/p><\/div>\n\t\t\t\t
Boys<\/strong><\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Kentwood’s boys team was faced with a different type of challenge, one that they hadn’t faced this year.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Kentwood took on Mount Si, the number one seed, with a trip to the quarterfinals up for grabs. Coming in, Kentwood had fallen in the district tournament in ugly fashion to Tahoma a week prior. This performance was a move in the right direction, despite falling to Mount Si with the final score of 83-62.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “All week we talked about being physical and competing. I didn’t think we did that last week against Tahoma… This week our whole focus was on just competing and being physical and I thought we did a much better job,” said Head Coach Blake Solomon.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t The Wildcats sprinted past the Conks in the second half en route to a 83-62 victory. Speed was a factor that Kentwood knew was going to be something they had to deal with.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Solomon’s squad was able to keep pace early on with the Wildcats due in part to their great three-point shooting. Corey Tita, Brandon Tagle and Blake Stempniak all made three point shots to stay with Mount Si. After the first quarter ended Kentwood trailed by two, 15-13.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Tita and Tagle combined for 10 second half points and were able to keep the game close. A big three from Yusof Edey off the bench gave Kentwood some life early in the quarter.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “He’s been playing well. He’s really found his niche and his role. He helps us defend and made a three tonight. He did some good things,” Solomon said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Heading into the locker rooms at halftime, Kentwood was down 35-28, a position that they worked hard to be in.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “I don’t think the final score is necessarily reflective of how competitive the first 24 minutes were,” Solomon said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t A big part of Mount Si’s success against the Conks was the transition offense that Wildcats ran, essentially blowing right past Conk defenders.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “They used their speed in transition. That is mainly where they beat us, it’s mainly where we lost the game. They’re fast and we didn’t do a good enough job to get back on defense,” Tita said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Coming out of the break, Kentwood cut the seven point lead to five. But Mount Si seemed to not miss a shot in the second half and crushed the Conks’ dreams of a comeback. Corey Tita finished with 20 points in the loss and had just eight second half points.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t “We can play against anybody. We were the underdogs coming into this game today, but that doesn’t matter to anybody in that locker room. We just let it get away in the end,” Tita said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t Kentwood faces Olympia in the round of 12 on Feb. 28 inside the Tacoma Dome. It’s a team the Conks beat 51-42 on Feb. 15. The two sides may be familiar this year, with their second matchup against each other in a month. But the two sides have been paired up just six times in the past 14 years (4-2 KW). “Once again, we’re the underdogs. We are trying to come in and make some noise,” Tita said.<\/p>\n\t\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Girls can’t overcome Eastlake, while boys run out of gas against Mount Si. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1142,"featured_media":68302,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-68301","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68301"}],"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\/1142"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68301"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68301\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68301"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kentreporter.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=68301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}