By Lillian O’Rorkeltucker@sammamishreview.com

The Skyline boys basket-ball team came out ready to start the new year off with a victory Jan. 4 in its first league game following winter break. But Ballard thwarted their plans, run-ning away with a fourth quarter win, 49-41.

“I thought we had it in the bag,” said junior guard Jonah Eastern, who led the Skyline Spartans with 23 points. “We came out men-tally ready. We wanted it. And we know how to win; we just don’t know how to finish, and that’s some-thing we’ve got to learn.”

After grabbing a 9-3 lead during the first five minutes of the game, the Spartans maintained their distance to finish out the first quarter with a score of 11-6.

The Ballard Beavers quickly answered back in the second quarter with a three-point field goal to start things off, followed by a successful performance at the foul line to tie the game at 11-11.

Eastern netted a jump shot and the fight was on.

The two teams battled basket-for-basket. With three minutes left in the first half, a three-pointer gave the Beavers their first taste of victory with a 16-15 lead. The Spartans countered with Eastern drawing the attention of two Ballard defenders on himself before passing the ball to Bryan Starnes, who fired it in from behind the three-point line.

Despite a free throw by the Beavers in the final minute of the quarter that tied the score, the Spartans pulled away with a 21-18 lead after Eastern dropped in another three-pointer.

The third quarter started with a bang when Sky-line sophomore Matisse Thybulle stole the ball and put two on the board with dunk.

“It was fun,” Thybulle said. “I wasn’t expecting it myself really. Kind of like, the game takes over, and you just go with the flow.”

His dunk put the Spar-tans in line for a 9-3 run,

which included another three-pointer by Eastern. Skyline had the lead at 30-21 until the four-minute mark when Ballard kicked off its comeback with its own three-pointer.

The Beavers closed in on the Spartans until finally, in the last second of the third quarter Ballard’s Seth Berger dunked to grab the lead, 33-32.

“I reminded them that a dunk is two points,” Sky-line coach Maui Borden said. “I wanted them to commit to not looking at the scoreboard in fourth quarter. Because it seems like we play tense when we start to look at the scoreboard and worry, ‘Oh, we are only up one or only up two.’ When they can just push that aside and just play, they’re fun to watch.”

The Spartans quickly took back the lead in the start of the fourth quarter after Eastern connected for a three-pointer.

Skyline managed to hang on to a small lead for the first four minutes until the

SPORTS WednesdayJanuary 9, 2013B4

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By Lillian O’Rorkeltucker@sammamishreview.com

Skyline and Ballard put on a nail-biting show Jan. 4 when the two girls team went back and forth on the court, ending the fourth quarter in a 44-44 tie.

The game wasn’t decided until the final second of overtime, when Haley Smith made the game-winning shot for the Skyline Spartans to clinch the game 54-53.

“We were crowd pleas-ers, I think, tonight. It’s hard on the coach, but it was an exciting game, it was an exciting finish,” Skyline coach Greg Bruns said. “You could just see in Ballard’s eyes that they felt that they had that game. To take it away from them in the last second, that’s tough.”

The game started out in a tie with both teams finishing the first quarter with 11 points on the board. Skyline secured a 14-point lead by half-time, but they slowly lost it in the second half, as Ballard matched the Spartans missed shots with successful field goals.

“We were thinking that we were back in control and started to settle in. Third quarter went really dry for us,” Bruns said. “We shot a really low percentage. We were taking one shot and done. They were getting

rebounds, and they were making shots.”

The two teams finished regular play tied and went into overtime. They continued to go bas-ket for basket until six seconds were left on the clock and Skyline was down by one.

“We threw the ball to Haley Smith. The play was to get it back to Ra-chel [Shim],” Bruns said. “And she found a way to get to the basket and made the shot at the last second. We didn’t play our best, but those are sometimes the biggest wins for you.”

By Christina Corrales-Toynewcastle@isspress.com

Students returned to school after winter break on Jan. 2, but coach Omar Parker’s Liberty boys basketball team didn’t see much of a layoff during the two-week respite.

In fact, the Patriots practiced on Christmas Eve and played in a tour-nament in Salem, Ore., just three days later.

“We practiced long and hard over the entire break,” Parker said.

The hard work definite-ly paid off for the Patriots, who soundly defeated Lake Washington, 64-44, in a Jan. 4 contest.

The Patriots shot out of the gate quickly on the way to an 18-10 lead after the first quarter. Liberty went on to extend the lead by one, heading into halftime, leading, 29-20.

The beginning of the second half, however, was a different story, as Lake Washington emerged from the locker room with what appeared to be a new sense of urgency. Just three minutes into the half, the Kangs cut Liberty’s lead to just one point.

At that point, the Liber-ty coach called a timeout to refocus the team.

“In the timeout, coach just said to make sure we talk on defense. We just fo-cused back up and we got back to the fundamentals which we’ve been doing all year,” said senior Matthew Campbell, who led the team with 19 points.

After the timeout, the Patriots held Lake Wash-ington scoreless for nearly eight minutes, effectively allowing Liberty to put the game away.

“Coach wanted us to really step on their throat and take this game away from them, not let them back in, and I think we feel like we played well,” said senior Robbie Thom-as, who had 18 points.

Liberty captured the win behind big scoring perfor-mances from both Thomas and Campbell, but it was senior leader Tynan Gilm-ore who made many of the baskets possible as he dished assist after assist.

“Tynan is the heart of the team,” Thomas said. “He makes those little passes; he gets us

all those open looks and our offense really goes through him.”

Campbell agreed, add-ing that Gilmore was a key factor that led to his 19 points.

“Tynan is a really good point guard, one of the best in the league in my opinion, and the reason why I had such a good night was because he passed me the ball down low,” he said.

The Liberty coach said he was particularly proud of the team’s defensive effort, especially the eight-minute stretch holding Lake Washington scoreless.

“Our identity has been defense,” Parker said. “No matter what’s happen-ing on the offensive end, we’ve really said that we can give maximum effort on the defensive end and be committed to each other down there.”

Parker couldn’t name one standout player after the team’s complete ef-fort, but he was particu-larly impressed with the play of his seniors and their leadership, he said.

“We’ve been talking about playing together and playing for each other and playing harder than our opponent and I think for one of the first times, we really did that tonight,” he said.

Liberty girls beat Lake Washington, too

The Liberty girls also captured a win against Lake Washington, defeat-ing the Kangs, 45-38.

Senior Delane Agnew and junior Tara Johnson led the team in scoring with nine points each.

Liberty finished the first quarter down just one point to the Kangs, but stayed tough behind a strong de-fense through the game.

The Patriots held Lake Washington to just five and six points in the sec-ond and third quarters, respectively.

Ballard scorches Skyline boys, 49-41

UP NEXTSkyline vs. Garfield47:30 p.m. Jan. 124Skyline High School41122 228th Ave. S.E.

Spartan girls get win with OT buzzer beater

UP NEXTSkyline at Eastlake 47:30 p.m. Jan. 94Eastlake High School4400 228th Ave. N.E.

Patriots sweep rival Kangs

UP NEXTLiberty at Sammamish4Girls: 6:30 p.m. Jan. 114Boys: 8 p.m. Jan. 114Sammamish High School4100 140th Ave. S.E., Bellevue

By John Leggettip-sports@isspress.com

The Issaquah boys basketball squad reached the midway juncture in its campaign recently and was able to stay in the hunt by staving off a physical Roo-sevelt contingent on the road Jan. 4, winning 53-49 to escalate its KingCo 4A mark to 4-2.

“I was really pleased

with the way our play-ers adapted to Roosevelt’s physical style of play,”

Issaquah head coach Jason Griffith said. “In our league, you have to be able to adjust to the several dif-ferent styles and looks that your opponents throw at you. They enter the games with the idea of impos-ing their will on you. The Roughriders aren’t any different in that they play hard and make you earn everything you get.”

The Eagles coach said

that the major difference in the encounter with the Roughriders was his squad’s accuracy from the charity stripe as the game wound down and Roosevelt tried to stop the clock by sending his shooters to the stripe.

The purple and gold took 14 shots from the foul line in the fourth quarter

See SKYLINE, Page B5

Issaquah boys rough up Roosevelt

BY GREG FARRAR

Matthew Campbell, Liberty High School senior center, puts up two of his team-leading 19 points during the Patriots’ third quarter tear against Lake Washington on Jan. 4.

By John Leggettip-sports@isspress.com

It was parity Friday in KingCo 4A girls bas-ketball Jan. 4 as Skyline visited Ballard and won a narrow 54-53 decision, while Issaquah traveled to Roosevelt and struggled against the Roughrider girls, losing 41-40 in regulation, to fall to 3-3 in league play.

For Issaquah, the finish was not as memorable as Roosevelt was not very hospitable toward the Eagles. The purple and

gold’s top point getter was Aimee Brakken with 19 points. The Roughrider scoring was spread far more evenly as their start-ing five averaged eight points apiece.

“That loss on the road to Roosevelt was caused by a combination of little things,” Issaquah coach Kathy Gibson said. “We didn’t shoot as well as we normally do, and Roosevelt was knocking down the critical shots when they had to. Additionally, there were some missed calls by the officials both ways

and our girls were sort of frustrated by that.”

Issaquah started out like a house on fire in the encounter.

After the first quarter of the road meeting, the scoreboard read 18-4 in favor of the Eagles. The Roughriders turned the tables on their unsuspect-ing guests in the second stanza though, outscoring the Eagles 14-6 to close the gap a bit and make the tally at intermission 24-18 in favor of Issaquah.

Both squads scored 10 points in the third period,

but a determined and stingy Roosevelt turned things up a notch in the game’s fourth frame to outduel Issaquah 13-6 and claim the close conquest to turn Issaquah team away, defeated by one.

Eagles girls falls to Roosevelt by oneUP NEXT

Issaquah at Inglemoor 47:30 p.m. Jan. 94Inglemoor High School415500 Simonds Road N.E., Kenmore

UP NEXTIssaquah at Newport48 p.m. Jan. 114Newport High School44333 Factoria Blvd. S.E., Bellevue

See EAGLES, Page B5

THE ISSAQUAH PRESSTHE ISSAQUAH PRESSTHE ISSAQUAH PRESS

BY LILLIAN O’RORKE

Skyline junior Blake O’Brien works his way around Ballard’s defense in the Jan. 4 KingCo 4A game.

The Issaquah Press Wednesday, January 9, 2013 • B7

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