By Michael Cignoli (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
MARIONVILLE — Moments after concluding the 27th Annual Lady Comet Classic on Saturday, the teams had already shifted their focus from the championship game to the weeks to come.
Both coaches were less concerned about what transpired during Ash Grove’s 72-55 victory over Spokane, but what the result meant for each of their teams as they prepare for a playoff push.
For the Pirates, who won the title for the third time in the past four years, the tournament has historically been the point at which the team begins to play its best basketball. Coach Bryan Dean hopes that trend continues as the team looks to contend for a second straight district title.
“It just starts setting the standard and getting it back to the order that it needs to be,” Dean said. “We try to set the stage at this place. It seems like it always gets us going in the right direction. We start clicking a little bit. We just try to restore the order every time we come here. This is what we’re looking for, so we can end up getting to that district final and maybe get another one.”
For Spokane, the game further bolstered the confidence of a team that started four sophomores and entered the tournament as the No. 5 seed. The Owls recorded back-to-back upsets over Diamond and top-seeded Clever — and were tied with the second-seeded Pirates at the half.
But Ash Grove, which started four seniors, took advantage of turnovers and miscues in the fourth quarter and turned a five-point lead into a decisive victory with a late 19-7 run.
It was an unceremonious end to a tournament in which the young Owls showed a lot of growth, giving them reason to be optimistic about the final three-plus weeks of the regular season.
“I asked them in the locker room after the game ‘If I would have asked you at the beginning of the season if you thought you were going to get second place in the Marionville tournament, what would you guys have said?’” Spokane coach Autumn Thomas said. “And they just said ‘No.’ I told them to keep their heads up. We’ve got some hard games coming up, but they’re winnable games. We’ve got a little stretch of the season before we go into districts. Just work hard and push forward. This game is kind of a learning experience because they’re so young, but I believe in them and have faith in them. The rest of the season is going to be alright.”
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE GAME
Missouri State signee Khloe Moad led all scorers with 25 points for Ash Grove, 17 of them in the first half. But Spokane hit seven 3-pointers before halftime — including buzzer-beaters at the ends of the first and second quarters — to send the teams to their locker rooms tied at 31.
“They’ve won two in a row and just shot lights-out,” Dean said. “That’s what I told them at halftime. We have to get possessions. We can’t let them have extra possessions on offense and get offensive rebounds. We took away those possessions and they weren’t hitting them.”
The adjustments opened the doors for Ash Grove’s offense, which found a rhythm in the second half and outscored the Owls 41-24 after the break — including 23-12 in the fourth quarter.
“When you’ve got a hot team, you can only control what you can control,” Dean said. “They were shooting it lights-out. You had to take away extra possessions. They missed one, you better not let them get another one — and we weren’t. Then on the offensive side, we started executing, stretching them out, being patient with the ball and getting to the rim more.”
Spokane held Moad to eight points in the second half, but Brittany Gilliland (17 total points) and Emma McClelland (16 points) helped make up the difference. The seniors combined for 21 points in the final two quarters and gave the Pirates three players in double figures.
“Everybody has to step up,” Dean said. “We can’t just be watching one person do stuff on the offensive end. We have to be moving. If they’re going to focus on (Khloe) — and they will — there are other people that are going to be open. They have to step up and make shots.”
McClelland, Gilliland and Moad were all named to the all-tournament team — though they were more excited about the first-place finish after falling to Crane in last year’s championship.
“We like to claim this tournament as ours,” Moad said. “Last year, not pulling through, it kind of bit us in the butt. We turned around and wanted it more this year because we didn’t get it last year.”
The Pirates (10-6) hope to carry the momentum into the heart of their Southwest Conference schedule, which continues Monday at Lockwood. They are 0-1 after a two-point loss to Diamond on January 7 — and had a 10-day break before resuming their schedule Tuesday in Marionville.
“I feel like we escalate after this tournament every single year,” Gilliland said. “We just get a lot of wins in this tournament typically and we really play as a team around this time.”
The Owls (9-9) finished with 11 treys – four of them from Raylen Wallace, their lone senior starter. She led Spokane with 16 points and earned a spot on the all-tournament team.
Sydney Bryan (13 points) and Tristen Wallace (10) also scored in double-figures for Spokane, while Madison King was also named to the all-tournament team after contributing eight points.
“They’re a good bunch of girls and they work hard,” said Thomas, who is in her first year with the team. “We had a rough three minutes. Game got away a little bit in about three minutes of time. We had a hole to dig out of and we just didn’t have enough time to dig out of that hole.”
SPOKANE (9-9) 17 14 12 12 — 55
ASH GROVE (10-6) 19 12 18 23 — 72
ALL-TOURNAMENT TEAM
Bella Harter, Billings
Ireland Jones, Clever
Riah Robinson, Clever
Raylen Wallace, Spokane
Madison King, Spokane
Lauren Turner, Diamond
Grace Frazier, Diamond
Gracie Brawley, Crane
Danielle Cutbirth, Crane
Emma McClelland, Ash Grove
Khloe Moad, Ash Grove
Brittany Gilliland, Ash Grove
