2A Girls Basketball: Bearcats Leave No Question in Rout of Centralia

It doesn’t take much for the Bearcats to make their point.

Case in, uh, point: the last minute and a half of the first quarter of their 84-20 win over Centralia on Friday night.

W.F. West, the No. 1 in the Class 2A rankings, got off to a sluggish — by its own standards — start, leading just 6-3 after five minutes of play in their home installment of the crosstown rivalry.

“There’s a bit of a crowd here, and they’re really excited, and I think that was part of the missing the layups, and the defense, too,” Bearcat coach Tom Kelly said. “It wasn’t stage fright, because they’ve been on big stages too many times, but it was just the excitement and everything. We’re only human, right?”

All it took was one well-timed bucket from Erika Brumfield to fix things.

Brumfield scored with 2 1/2 minutes left in the first quarter and the Bearcats’ full-court press, able to set itself up after a made bucket, took over. The Tigers committed five turnovers before the second frame started and W.F. West set off on a 25-2 run that lasted until midway through the second frame — and turned that 6-3 game into a 31-5 blowout some six minutes later.

“(Tom) calls timeout, and tells us we need to pick it up,” said Bearcat guard Maggie Vadala, who finished with 7 points, five rebounds, four steals and three assists. “I don’t know what caused (the slow start), but we kind of picked things up with like two minutes left in the first quarter.”

W.F. West took advantage of 23 Tiger turnovers in the first half and led 39-10 at the break, before pouring in 24 in the third quarter to get the lead past 40 and put the running clock in place.

“It brings us a lot of intensity,” Vadala said of the team’s press. “We just keep getting the steals, and that leads us to how high of scores we get, you know?”

W.F. West finished with 24 steals and 28 assists, with every player that saw the court recording at least one assist.

“They’re good. They share the basketball, they’re a very good team and very disciplined in everything they do,” Centralia coach Doug Ashmore said. “Offensively, they’ve gotten tremendously better. … They just run their offensive sets proficiently, and they’re a really good ball club.”

Courtney Bennett came off the bench to lead W.F. West with 18 points, going 3 of 4 from long range and adding five steals and four assists. Brumfield finished with 15 points, 10 rebounds and six steals, while Taya McCallum scored 12 with five boards.

Annika Waring hit 5 of 7 shots for 10 points with six rebounds, and Kiara Steen scored eight with four rebounds and nine assists. Julia Johnson added 8 points with four steals, and W.F. West shot 51 percent (35 of 68) from the field to improve to 4-0 in Evergreen 2A Conference play.

Rachel Wilkerson scored 6 points with four rebounds for Centralia, and Ellie Corwin added 6 points and a pair of blocked shots.

“We fought. They’re obviously where we’re not right now, and we’re still trying to get there,” Ashmore said. “I just thought our team battled with what we had against us in the opponents.”

Centralia (9-5, 2-2 league) hosts Aberdeen on Tuesday.

W.F. West (11-2) plays a nonleague game at White River on Saturday. The Hornets (12-3) are No. 4 in The News Tribune’s prep rankings, while W.F. West is ranked No. 1.

Note: It was the 16th straight win over Centralia for the Bearcats, a streak dating back to January of 2010. Kelly, who coached the Tigers for two years during that span and is in his third year in Chehalis, now has a 5-4 record in the rivalry games. “It feels really good,” he joked, of pushing his Swamp Cup winning percentage above .500.