They faced a mighty deficit early, but the Kamiakin girls wouldn’t be denied

Five minutes into Friday night’s regional contest against Seattle Prep, things couldn’t have looked much worse for the Kamiakin High School girls basketball team.

Poor play on both ends of the floor saw the Braves fall behind 18-2, and nothing seemed to suggest they would be able to turn that abhorrent start around.

“It just didn’t look like we’d ever played basketball before. I’m shaking my head thinking, ‘this is going to be a long night,” Kamiakin coach Lane Schumacher said. “I just thought that the effort wasn’t there. It looked like we had never played in a big game.”

But Kamiakin certainly has been in big games like this before, and showed composure emblematic of that in rallying back for a 73-57 win over the Panthers at Chiawana.

“We all just motivated each other. We made sure that we could do this, we could achieve this,” senior center Chanceler Williams said. “It was all teamwork.”

The win puts the Braves (21-2) straight through to the state quarterfinals at the Tacoma Dome for the second straight year, getting to skip the Round of 12 Seattle Prep (18-5) will have to meet either Shorecrest or Cleveland in on Wednesday.

“The other positive is that we’ll get to watch the team that we’ll wind up playing, play on Wednesday (Mt. Spokane vs. the loser of Saturday’s game between West Seattle and Garfield),” Schumacher said. “We also kind of get to get acclimated to the Tacoma Dome and settled in, so hopefully it works out well for us.”

Kamiakin took its first lead of the game on a layup by Williams to make it 38-36 at the midpoint of the third quarter. The lead would change hands a few more times before the Braves sprinted to the finish, closing on an 18-7 run to win fairly comfortably.

While the start was something they hope to soon forget, the moxie the Braves — who have finished fifth and fourth in the past two state tournaments, respectively — showed in fighting back for the win could provide a spark for a deep playoff run.

“It just shows that we’re not gonna panic. We’re able to keep playing and hopefully, eventually, something will come around,” Schumacher said. “Hopefully we’re able to right the ship, and it worked out tonight.”

Two-time MCC Player of the Year Oumou Toure poured in 26 points and added 10 rebounds to lead Kamiakin, while Alexa Hazel had a 14-point, 12-rebound double-double. Williams came off the bench and scored 17 points — two shy of her career best — knocking down 7 of 11 shots.

“It just feels good to help out the team,” Williams said. “We all contributed, so that’s really good.”

Emily Petro finished with 17 points, after scoring 11 in the first quarter, for Seattle Prep. Tamia Stricklin added 16 points and Bea Franklin had seven assists and three steals.

This story was originally published February 23, 2018 at 11:24 PM with the headline "They faced a mighty deficit early, but the Kamiakin girls wouldn’t be denied."