The Spokane Owls coasted to a 62-39 victory over the New Covenant Academy Warriors on Monday night. Spokane ended a long losing streak with the road victory. The Owls and the Warriors both shot the ball well in the first quarter with Spokane coming out on top, 19-12. In the second quarter, the Warriors began to struggle to score, an issue that plagued them the rest of the game. The Owls made six 3’s in the half and went into the locker room leading, 34-21.
At the beginning of the second half, the Owls went up 20 when senior Cody Terrell put in an offensive rebound, giving them the lead, 41-21. The Owls dominated the offensive glass most of the night.
“Offensive rebounds are part of my game; it needs to be or else I won’t score much,” said Terrell. “We aren’t’ oversized, we are a pretty short team, but when we play like we can, we act a lot taller than we are.”
With a comfortable 20-point lead, Spokane would cruise the rest of the night, never letting the Warriors back in the game. Leading all scorers on the night was Spokane senior Storm Price with 20 points.
“I thought we came out with a lot of energy, we distributed the ball well,” said Price. “My teammates found spots to get open and when I’d drive they’d fill the lanes. Everyone was just clicking. We came out and played good team ball. It’s been a while since we’ve won. It’s hard to get a win after you’ve lost so many times, but when you finally get that win it’s a good spark. I think this is where we go on a run.”
New Covenant coach Bill Hudgens was proud of his team’s effort but says his young Warriors are still learning.
“We struggled to shoot the ball, big time,” said Hudgens. “The last two games we’ve struggled offensively. We are trying to learn to value each possession but now the kids are over thinking it. When a good shot comes in the flow, they think ‘well, maybe one more pass’ instead of shooting the ball. That’s just part of our development. Spokane is a real good team, we certainly don’t have five three-point shooters, and they’ve got them.
“It was a great win for us, it’s been a long time,” said Spokane coach Tom Colvin. “We hadn’t won since December so we’ve been on a really bad stretch. We’ve had six games come down to the last minute and we hadn’t really been able to execute down the stretch. When you lose six close games, you wonder about your team. I was really proud of our kids, tonight we decided to come out and we made it a goal to get stops early. I thought the big key to the game was when, at the beginning of the second half, we came out and we got three out of four stops early and kind of blew it up. We got up 20 in the third quarter and then from there we took care of it.”
Price is a player known by many but Colvin expressed pride in the effort given by the entire team.
“Sometimes we don’t appreciate Storm as much as we should, we just expect so much out of him, and he did have his regular game tonight,” said Colvin. “Cody Terrell, when he comes to play like that, we are pretty tough to beat. Cody was aggressive from the get-go, and played really well. I thought Clayton Moore absolutely rebounded the ball well. Our bench came in during the first half and played extremely well for us. We joke around about ‘playing like a grown man’ and Isaiah Bean, a freshman, came in and played like a grown man in the second half. Hopefully, tonight gets us going. I was really proud of our kids’ effort tonight.”
Spokane 19 15 10 18 -62
NCA 12 9 9 9 -39
Spokane—Storm Price-20, Isaiah Bean-11, Cody Terrell-10, Chase Horton-8, Jack Rigdon-5, Austin Holt-4, Mark Moran-2, Clayton Moore-2
NCA—Silas Siebert-16, Timmy Smith-9, Cole Bassett-7, Cameron Altena-3, Kole Stutzman-2, Luke Han-2
