Terrific Trojans
If Post Falls can find a way to package its start on Tuesday and take it south, good luck.
Melody Kempton scored 19 points and Bayley Brennan added 17 as the host Trojans rolled past the Lewiston Bengals 75-37 in the championship game of the 5A Region 1 basketball tournament at The Arena, repeating as regional champs.
“We came in here ready to play, pumped up and took it at them right out of the gate,” Kempton said. “Everyone came ready to play, focused and I hope we can bring that to state next week.”
Post Falls (21-2) closed the first quarter on a 14-0 run for a 25-7 lead. The Trojans scored the last 10 points of the half and led 50-15 at intermision.
“I could tell we were ready to play before the game,” Brennan said. “We were ready to win and didn’t want to mess around with going to state. Our goal is to win state, but we were ready to get there. It was just a good day today.”
Post Falls opens vs. Capital (18-5) of Boise, the fourth-place finisher in the District 3 tournament, in the first round at state next Thursday at 5:15 p.m. PST at the Ford Idaho Center in Nampa.
Lewiston (16-7) travels to Lake City (14-9), which eliminated visiting Coeur d’Alene 54-22, in Thursday’s second-place game with the winner advancing to a state 5A play-in game on Saturday at Grangeville High.
Last Friday, the Bengals beat the Timberwolves 42-24 in an opening round game.
Coeur d’Alene finishes 6-16.
Post Falls 75, Lewiston 37: Hitting from everywhere, the Trojans were 27 of 39 from the field in the first three quarters.
“Whatever we did tonight, I’d like the bottle it up and take it to Boise with us,” Allert said. “That was just a total team effort. Everyone that came into the game did their job. Macky (Morris) has been huge on the boards for us. They just all played well. We’d talked about coming into the game focused, and I think they were focused tonight.”
Brennan scored 15 of her 17 points in the first half for Post Falls.
“At one of the timeouts, there was nothing I could say to them,” Allert said. “They did it all. At halftime, they said a couple of adjustments we needed to do, I didn’t have to say a thing, and they just played off each other all night and shared the ball really well, and good things happened.”
Post Falls, which lost one senior off last year’s team, finished third at state in 2017.
“It’s been a year-long process,” Allert said. “The first goal was to win our league. And it all started with the schedule at the start of the year, going to Vegas, scheduling Central Valley. We’re just trying to peak at the right time, and we played really well tonight. But I don’t think we’ve played our best basketball yet.”
Alyssa Ralstin led Lewiston with nine points.
The fourth quarter was played with a running clock, which goes into effect when a team leads by 30 points or more after three quarters.
Post Falls beat Lewiston by 32 and 28 points in their two 5A Inland Empire League matchups.
“They were on a different level than we were tonight,” Lewiston coach Dave Cornelia said. “I just told them we’ve got to forget this right away and move on. We’ll have get on the bus, have a short practice tomorrow and get ready to compete on Thursday.”
Lewiston 7 8 12 10 — 37
Post Falls 25 25 24 1 — 75
LEWISTON — Randall 8, Ralstin 9, Wells 6, Cornelia 0, Kinzer 3, Genzer 0, Isley 2, Cady 2, Eke 2, Stoddard 2, Richardson 3.
POST FALLS — Smith 0, Gleaves 3, Morris 9, Gardiner 4, Brennan 17, T. McCliment-Call 13, J. McCliment-Call 2, Schreibeis 0, Carpenter 0, Kempton 19, Parks 8, LaFountaine 0.
Lake City 54, Coeur d’Alene 22: Bridget Rieken scored 10 first-quarter points to jump-start the Timberwolves.
“We started out in a man press and tried to get our offense going early on tonight,” Lake City coach James Anderson said. “We never really found a rythmn offensively on Friday, and it really helped us find some energy to get going.”
Brooklyn Rewers scored eight of her 12 points in the second quarter for Lake City (14-9).
“We were able to execute and get some baskets in the second quarter and a lot of points in the paint,” Anderson said.
Emma Whiteman scored 13 points for Coeur d’Alene.
Coeur d’Alene 5 5 8 4 — 22
Lake City 16 16 9 13 — 54
COEUR d’ALENE — Minerath 4, Morton 0, Brainard-Adams 4, Chavez 0, Whiteman 13, Younker 0, Louden 1, Breen 0.
LAKE CITY — Avery 6, Barber 2, Mitchell 4, Teets 0, Rieken 14, Muehlhausen 0, Hawkins 3, Wilson 0, Halliday 2, Rewers 12, Simpson 10, Littman 1, Vershum 0, Allen 0.