Vikings advance in consolation bracket against Patriots

PALOUSE — After giving up a double-digit lead during the game, the Garfield-Palouse girls basketball team fought back to beat the Liberty Christian Patriots 49-34 on Feb. 10 to advance to the next round of the consolation bracket of the 1B District 9 tournament.

Garfield-Palouse began the game with a healthy balance of offense and defense. The Vikings opened with a 5-0 run that would initiate a quarter that saw Liberty Christian held to one total point in the entire frame. The Vikings would go into the second quarter up 11-1. Then the Patriots flipped the script.

Liberty Christian went on an 11-2 run to begin the second quarter, almost mirroring what its opponents did in the first. The Patriots didn’t take the lead in the frame, but were nipping at the heels of the Vikings, trailing just 17-16 going into halftime.

Liberty Christian wouldn’t have to wait long to take its first lead of the game – making a 3-pointer in the opening minute of the third quarter to take a 19-17 lead. This would be the largest and only lead of the game for the Patriots, and the Vikings went on an 11-0 run to take the lead back at 28-19 with 3:01 to go in the third quarter.

Liberty Christian was able to get the game back to within six to end the fourth quarter, trailing 34-28, but were never able to get closer. Garfield-Palouse outscored the Patriots 15-6 in the final quarter for the 15-point win and to advance in the district tournament.

Arguably as impressive as the comeback from the Lady Vikings was the fact that they were playing without their head coach for the first half.

Garfield-Palouse head coach Garrett Parrish wasn’t able to join his players on the bench in the first half due to feeling ill, and coaching responsibilities for the first two quarters fell on assistant head coach Blake Jones.

“The second half’s really all I can speak to,” Parrish said. “I saw the score and we must’ve jumped out (at the beginning), played pretty well. The second half, we came out and I knew we were in foul trouble right away, our goal is to stay out of that so we didn’t pressure too much early. And we did a good job attacking the basket, which we kind of talked about this week. We’ll get 3-pointers and we’ll be able to shoot it but we got to attack the rim and get the easy shots. I thought that was the difference between the third and fourth quarters.”

Ali Bush led the Patriots with 11 total points while Calista Davis added 10.

For Garfield-Palouse, Elena Flansburg had a game-high 28 points to pace the Vikings. Kyra Brantner also recorded double-digits for the Vikings, scoring 11.

Garfield-Palouse advanced to the next round of the consolation bracket on Feb. 15 against Oakesdale.

Results were unavailable at press time.

LIBERTY CHRISTIAN (12-9, 6-9)

Savannah Armijo 0 0-0 0, Lauren Reed 1 2-3 5, Camas Van Hollebeke 0 0-0 0, Annalise Drinkard 1 1-1 3, Ali Bush 4 0-0 11, Catherine Lindsay 1 2-2 5, Calista Davis 2 5-8 10. Totals 9 10-14 34.

GARFIELD-Palouse (8-11, 5-6)

Kara Blomgren 0 0-0 0, Zoe Laughary 1 0-0 2, Kennedy Cook 2 1-2 6, Elena Flansburg 11 4-6 28, HettyLee Laughary 1 0-0 2, Kyra Brantner 4 3-6 11. Totals 19 8-14 49.

3-point goals – Bush 3, Reed, Lindsay, Davis, Flansburg 2, Cook.