Garfield-Palouse, St. John-Endicott/LaCrosse trade wins

PALOUSE – Garfield-Palouse and St. John-Endicott/LaCrosse played each other in boys and girls basketball league competition on Dec. 10.

Girls played first, and Garfield-Palouse wasted no time holding St. John-Endicott/LaCrosse's offense in check while showing off its own scoring prowess.

The Lady Vikings came out scoring and held a double-digit lead over the Lady Eagles coming out of halftime, in what was its best performance of the season.

By 2:11 left in the third quarter, Garfield-Palouse had already exceeded its then-season-high 35 points against Asotin on Dec. 3, and was up 39-14.

St. John-Endicott/LaCrosse hit a buzzer-beater 3-pointer at the end of the third quarter to cut the lead down to 44-21, but the Eagles were unable to cut into the lead any more than that in the final eight minutes of regulation.

Garfield-Palouse would continue to build on its lead, outscoring St. John-Endicott/LaCrosse 18-12 in the final quarter to take the 62-33 win.

"We lost a lot of girls last year," Garfield-Palouse girls head coach Garrett Parrish said. "So, we got some girls that are older, they're just filling new roles. And our first couple games we really struggled. It was nice tonight to kind of click a little bit on offense and score some points and our defense came around, too. Having a week to get ready helped a lot for us, so hopefully we're kind of rolling now."

Morgan Lentz led the way for the Vikings with 18 points, six assists and six steals. Kennedy Cook contributed 13 points and five rebounds and Elena Flansburg had 12 points, seven rebounds, four assists and four steals.

The boys team was up next and played a drama-filled and physical game.

St. John-Endicott/LaCrosse began the game with a 7-3 three minutes into the first quarter, before Garfield-Palouse went on a 6-4 run to get the game within two heading into the second frame.

Both defenses bared their teeth in the opening 90 seconds of the second quarter, before Garfield-Palouse freshman guard Lane Collier made a lay-in from under the basket to tie the game at 11.

The Vikings gave up a considerable size advantage to the Eagles, with the two tallest Garfield-Palouse players standing at 6'3 and 6'2, while the two tallest St. John-Endicott/LaCrosse players stood at 6'10 and 6'6.

This advantage in the paint by the Eagles limited good shot opportunities inside the perimeter for the Vikings, and the Eagles went on a 16-7 run to head into halftime up 27-18.

Neither team could gain any ground on each other in the third quarter and the nine-point lead by St. John-Endicott/LaCrosse stood heading into the fourth quarter at 37-28.

"First I want to give props to G-P," SJEL boys head coach Mike Stubbs said. "They work really hard. They grind, they made us work for every point we got. Credit to them. As for us, we're still a work-in-progress here. I don't want to pigeon-hole us that we play one way, or that we can only play one way. Our goal is to be able to play multiple ways and do it well."

Garfield-Palouse attempted to use the physical interior presence of SJEL to its advantage in the fourth quarter, attempting to get shots at the free throw line via fouls. The approach was able to inch the Vikings slightly closer to the Eagles, but St. John-Endicott/LaCrosse ultimately came out with a 44-38 win.

"We're young," Garfield-Palouse head coach Nate Holbrook said. "That's a very experienced St. John-Endicott team. They got guys that can play. They've been out there; they got four seniors that were playing against (our) freshmen and sophomores with a junior. So that's part of it. But we battled. And I was very, very proud of our boys. We came out and we were in the game the whole time. We made a couple runs... they couldn't figure out some of our stuff that we had going, so we have some stuff that we're just putting in that's pretty fresh with our boys. So I'm very, very positive and very, very proud of how they operated tonight."

Collier led the Vikings in scoring with 11 points while Bryce Pfaff contributed 10 of his own.

St. John-Endicott/LaCrosse was led with 12 points from Matthew DeFord. Every player who got playing time for the Eagles had at least two points.

Garfield-Palouse boys and girls played against DeSales in Walla Walla on Dec. 13. Results weren't available at press time.