The good thing for the Tumwater girls basketball team is that as a top-eight seed, the T-Birds were guaranteed at least one more game in Yakima, no matter what happened in an opening-round matchup against No. 4 Prosser.
That’s just about the entirety of the positives, though, as things went wrong all night for Tumwater in a 57-31 loss to the Mustangs at AC Davis High School in Yakima.
The T-Birds’ defense kept them in it early, holding the Mustangs close despite the offense only managing six points in the entire first quarter. Midway through the second, Prosser’s lead was still in single digits at 19-12, when Regan Brewer — who had scored all 12 of Tumwater’s points — went down with an injury.
Brewer stayed out the rest of the game; despite playing just 12 of the 32 minutes, she still finished as Tumwater’s leading scorer.
Eleven of the next 13 Tumwater points — across the rest of the second and the entirety of the third quarter — came from Kylie Waltermeyer, but she fouled out before the third quarter ended. That meant that the Thunderbirds, who were already down 42-25 going into the fourth, had to play the final eight minutes without the two players who had accounted for all but two of their points.
Hadley Woods finished with five points, while Rhylee Beebe and Kendall Gjurasic had two point and two assists apiece.
Tumwater now knows the time and place of its next matchup, if not its foe. The T-Birds will be back in Yakima — this time at the SunDome — next Wednesday at 7:15 p.m. for a loser-out game with their season on the line. They’ll take on either No. 12 Enumclaw or No. 13 Columbia River, who play Saturday at Auburn High School for a trip to the Dome.
