Kamiakin refuses to quit, will place at state

A lot of teams, a lot of high school athletes, would close up shop after coming to the Tacoma Dome and getting eliminated from state title contention for the third straight year.

Add in a missed Thursday morning shootaround because of traffic and a ridiculous buzzer-beater causing your title run to come to an end, and motivation could be really hard to come by.

But the Kamiakin Braves aren’t most teams and their stars, Oumou Toure and Alexa Hazel, aren’t most athletes, facts they proved once again on Friday when they knocked off the top-rated Lincoln Abes 57-49 in a consolation bracket semifinal of the 3A girls state tournament.

“The best thing you can do is get out on that court and try it again,” Kamiakin coach Lane Schumacher said. “You get the win, and alright, you play again and let this journey go on as long as possible.”

The victory means the Braves will place in their third straight state tournament. Lincoln was the only team still alive Friday that also placed in last year’s tournament.

Kamiakin will play Seattle Prep — 60-45 winners over Bethel — at 9:15 a.m. Saturday in the fourth-/sixth-place game. Kamiakin beat Lynnwood 66-64 in the same game last year.

After falling in the quarterfinals to Garfield 47-44 on Thursday courtesy of a buzzer-beating 3 by the Bulldogs’ Jayla Howard, the Braves couldn’t help but feel disappointed. With Hazel and Toure now juniors, this was a team that many had picked to win it all this year.

“We were really mad,” Toure said. “The game didn’t go how we had planned. We didn’t really have a good shooting night.”

But they turned that frustration into motivation at team breakfast Friday morning.

“We kind of regrouped and got our heads together, and we just wanted to come out and have growth,” Hazel said. “When you’re not in the first-place game, you’ve gotta grow from that, and that was the mentality.”

Even playing with the proper motivation and focus, the first half was every bit a defensive struggle. Kamiakin went nearly 6 minutes without scoring a point in the second quarter, but a jumper by Chanceler Williams and a contested layup by Toure in the final minute gave the Braves a 21-20 lead at halftime.

After hitting just 1 of 10 shots in the first half, Hazel helped open up the scoring after intermission. At one point in the third quarter she she made three straight 3-pointers and accounted for all of Kamiakin’s points on a 13-6 run to go up by five. She scored 19 of her game-high 21 points in the half, and the Braves took a 43-36 into the fourth and never trailed again.

“We just kept competing until we were able to see some baskets fall,” Schumacher said. “It took awhile to adjust to their height. Sometimes we’d drive in and there’d be a 6-3 girl (Sharayah Johnson or A’Shia Donahue) waiting for you, so we were passing up open shots to drive into a tougher shot.

“So we figured that out, and we also got some fastbreak, transition points, and that was big.”

Toure poured in 20 points with 10 rebounds and three blocks. Faith Brantley led Lincoln (24-3) with 16 points.

The offensive improvement from the first to second half was vast for Kamiakin (22-3), which Toure chalked up to finishing the game shooting while facing the black-curtain backdrop at the center of the T-Dome, whereas the team was looking at the wide-open stadium seating for the first 16 minutes.

“That’s happened in almost every game I’ve watched here,” Toure said.

Kamiakin made just 29 percent of its shots from the field and went 1 of 8 from 3-point range to score 22 points in the first half, then shot 47 percent (3 of 8 from range) for 38 points in the second.

This story was originally published March 2, 2018 at 4:23 PM with the headline "Kamiakin refuses to quit, will place at state."