2011 Cardinals Come Close

SPOKANE - The 2011 Cardinals already went further in the state playoffs than last year by placing in the Final 8 at University High School.

And during the fourth quarter of their first game against the Bear Creek Grizzlies at the arena Friday, it seemed possible they might go even further. The game went into overtime after the teams tied at 47-47.

But in the end, the hardfighting WP team hit a wall on Friday in the form of their opponents' speed, which pushed the outcome in the Grizzlies' favor, and in their last game against Lake Roosevelt on Saturday in the form of the "Big Guy," 6-foot-8 Ty Egbert.

" We kept him to nine points on offense," Cardinals head coach T.J. Scott said after Saturday's game. "But we just couldn't shoot over the top of him."

Egbert blocked at least 10 shots that could have won WP the game. Despite an impressive number of treys, including a majority from Zach Bartlow, the Cardinals could not douse the Raiders' offense led by Brandon Kohler.

" Number 23 ( Kohler) absolutely smoked us," Scott said .

Neither loss was even close to a blowout. In both games, the Cardinals gave it all in their courageous attempt to bring home a trophy, the main goal for the state tournament.

"We just wanted some hardware, but we didn't pull it off," Cardinal Dustin Wooderchak said.

During the first game against the Redmond-based Grizzlies, who came out looking like a squad of Marines complete with buzz cuts, the Cardinals seemed to be in catch-up mode until they regained a promising upper hand in the fourth.

The Grizzlies had the kind of speed that was hard to combat but through fouls. While WP's initial shots missed, Bear Creek's seemed to go in easily. Tyler Baxter came in to shore up the Cardinals' scoring with a trey and two-point field goal, but the first quarter ended with WP behind 18-10.

Wooderchak drained a trey to start the scoring in the second, but Bear Creek's rebounding proved superior until WP found its usual delayed footing and began to shore up its second-chance record and free-throw score. The half ended a bit closer at 27-21.

In the third quarter, Bartlow began applying some valuable ballistics to his team's offense with spot-on treys that helped even the score at the end of the third quarter.

"We felt we were in control, then he (Bartlow) began his string of three pointers," Bear Creek head coach Scott Moe said. "He just kept hitting them - threes, threes, threes."

To make matters worse for the Grizzlies, Moe said his team "couldn't score forever" during the second half.

The first score of the fourth quarter put WP ahead when Bartlow went to the free throw line and scored for two. With seven minutes to go in the period, Baxter made it 41-37 with a field goal from within the key, leaving the Grizzlies somewhat shaken and uncoordinated.

A lead exchange followed with Wooderchak putting his team ahead with a trey 44-43 with 2:30 minutes left in the game. Another Bartlow trey kept the Cardinals' slim margin at 47-45 with less than a minute. But the Cardinals could not keep the Grizzlies from tying it up 47-47 before the buzzer, and the game went into overtime.

The fifth, four-minute period was all Bear Creek. The Grizzlies scored first. The Cardinals fought hard for control of the ball under both buckets but kept missing their big shots, their cues and their defensive moves.

" I thought we had it won," Wooderchak said. "They just shut us down."

Head coach Scott agreed.

"We let one go there at the end," he said. "We battled, battled, battled, but we just didn't get it done."

The Cardinals trailed for much of their game against the Raiders as well with the first quarter on Saturday ending 14-9 in Lake Roosevelt's favor.

With Egbert towering over every Cardinal, including its biggest player and star rebounder Matt Hamilton, WP could not break through the cordon around the key often enough.

" That's the toughest guy I've had to rebound against," Hamilton said.

Hamilton and Scott said the Cardinals gave pretty much everything they had.

"The kids played very hard again today," Scott said after Saturday's game. "We shot really poorly. Our big scorers just didn't hit the shots, and that hurt us."

The Cardinals began to catch up somewhat during the second quarter with Bartlow's field goal bringing the score to 25-21, but the Raiders sunk a big trey just before the buzzer as the last word of the half.

The Cardinals came even closer in the third quarter, after Wooderchak, Kris Cady, Baxter and Bartlow rallied to tie the game at 38- 38. But with three seconds on the clock, WP's thorn in the side, Kohler, pitched another big three-pointer before the period ran out.

The Cardinals could not keep up with the Raiders in the final eight minutes, fouling the fast-breaking opponents, missing big shots and missing free throws.

The Raiders clenched their victory 57-49, though Lake Roosevelt head coach Brad Wilson said: "We knew they ( Cardinals) weren't going to go away. They kept up their battle."

Wilson said he decided he would focus on quickness to outmaneuver the WP defense, which was successful in limiting Big Guy Egbert's score.

"We tried to speed up the game," he said. "We were better off with a track meet than a boxing match."