The Tigers’ momentum from a rivalry win against Chehalis on Tuesday night carried over to Thursday at Ron Brown Court in Centralia — but only for so long.
The Thunderbirds trailed 9-5 late in the first quarter, but erased that deficit in the last minute and won the second quarter 20-4 for a 60-30 Evergreen 2A Conference girls basketball victory.
“It was a fantastic first seven minutes,” Tiger coach Mark Westley said. “Then, I don’t know what happened from there, but it was all downhill. They went on a huge run, literally, throughout the rest of the game.”
Annnie Voetberg led Centralia with 13 points, but the Tigers shot just 11 of 50 (22 percent) from the field.
“We started out well,” Westley added, “just somehow, Tumwater kind of picked it up a notch, and it wasn’t going our way any time after that.”
Centralia (4-10, 2-6 league) is at Aberdeen on Tuesday, and plays four of its final six games on the road.
Bearcats Fall to Wolves 58-24
TUMWATER — The blunt criticism W.F. West coach Henri Weeks offered following his team’s 58-24 Evergreen 2A Conference loss here to Black Hills could easily have come from former American Idol judge Simon Cowell.
Apparently, Chehalis would not make it to the next round with a performance like Thursday night.
“Absolutely horrible,” he said, as his team shot 7 of 41 from the field and scored just 2 first-quarter points. “We had no offense, obviously. We came out and just had no energy.
“We didn’t play very good defense in the first half,” he added. “The bottom line is, we just had no energy except from two girls, and that’s not enough to get you a win against a pretty good team.”
Monica DeTray led the Bearcats from the bench, scoring 9 and grabbing seven the team’s 20 rebounds on the night and playing most of the second half, Weeks said.
“She’s averaging four minutes a game,” the coach said. “Obviously, she came to play. She’s a role kid that works hard all the time and decided that she was going to come out and get after it.”
Kaylee Hartman and Uriah Thomas scored 4 each for the Bearcats, who made 10 of 24 free throw attempts.
Black Hills made 16 of 22 attempts from the charity stripe, and Shanae Sauls and Chelsea Haskey scored 13 and 12, respectively.
W.F. West (7-7, 3-4 league) hosts Hoquiam Tuesday.
