Cascade senior Peighton Williams (21) looks for an open teammate at the Oregon West Conference championship at North Marion High School in Aurora on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016.
AURORA – In the first two minutes of Tuesday night’s game, the Cougars lit up the scoreboard.
Cascade High School’s No. 1-ranked girls basketball team took a 12-0 lead against No. 7 North Marion on three steal-and-fast break lay-ins by Kelsey Molan and two 3-pointers by Alyssa St. Peter in the first 2:12 of the Oregon West Conference finale.
The game was never in doubt from that point – though North Marion did rally late to make it interesting – as Cascade won 65-50 to clinch the conference championship.
“It’s definitely a great accomplishment, especially going 23-0 since our first loss to Kamehameha, which is a great team,” said Cascade sophomore Halle Wright, who scored eight points. “Coming off, getting league, we get a bye so we get more practice and we can see what we’re made of more. It’s a pretty great feeling.”
Cascade improves to 23-1 and finishes the Oregon West Conference at 10-0.
But winning 23 games consecutively hasn’t been without its challenges.
The team hit a lull where the team didn’t practice well and didn’t play to its potential.
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“We’ve never ridden this horse this long,” Cascade coach Mark Stevens said. “You get no sympathy here, but it’s pressure no matter where you’re at. Battling for the fourth spot, the third spot, it’s continual, unless you’ve been in the coaching world you don’t understand.
“People talk in automatics. There are no automatics. How many times does a one seed win it? Maybe 50-50, maybe not even that. You have to battle this complacency. We went into about a two-week funk. We could feel it in practice, and it ended when we played them in our place.”
Since Cascade’s 49-36 win against North Marion on Feb. 2, the Cougars have routed their opponents seemingly at will.
Tuesday night the Cougars went on a 10-0 run to start the second quarter and led 28-6.
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When St. Peter hit back-to-back 3-pointers in the third quarter, Cascade led 49-19 with 5:03 left in the period.
“We’re playing top teams and we’re competing like this so there’s not much more we can do,” said St. Peter, who scored 22 points. “We’re just coming out hard, and I think it says a lot kind of how we’ve been coming out strong like that against teams that are top 10, top five even.”
North Marion came back in the fourth quarter with runs of 5-0, 8-0 and when Kiley Florez hit a lay-in with 51 seconds left for a 9-0 run, the Huskies cut Cascade’s lead to 61-50.
The Cougars clinched the game at the free-throw line, but the Huskies showed a lot of spunk in coming back.
“You’re down 30, it’s real easy to just drop your head and get beat by 40 or 50,” North Marion coach Dennis Melcher said. “I told them I was proud of them. I was proud of them, they kept their heads up, kept playing hard and battled back. Even if they had their second squad in in the fourth quarter the fact that we didn’t get up and we cut it to 10.”
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That Cascade is going 10 deep in games without a huge fall off speaks to the team’s remarkable depth.
But the conference championship is only part of Cascade living up to its potential.
“It means a lot,” said senior wing Crystal Wilson. “We’ve worked really hard for this and all of our girls have improved a lot throughout the year and so we just have a really deep bench and that helped us a lot. All of our hard work paid off.”
bpoehler@StatesmanJournal.com, (503) 399-6701 or Twitter.com/bpoehler
North Marion sophomore Ally Umbenhower (2) drives down the court at the Oregon West Conference championship against Cascade at North Marion High School in Aurora on Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016.
Cascade 65, North Marion 50
Cascade: Alyssa St. Ppeter 22, Molan 16, Wright 8, Miller 8, Haddix 3, Wilson 3, Williams 3, Woods 2, Haddix, Cade, Mack, Loukojarvi, Bangert. Totals 23 10-15 65.
North Marion: Ally Umbenhower 17, Henry 11, Florez 10, Kinniburgh 5, Scanlan 4, Morgan 2, Wing 1, Dron, Jimenez. Totals 13 17-20 50.
|
CAS |
18 |
18 |
19 |
10 |
— 65 |
|
NM |
6 |
9 |
13 |
22 |
— 50 |
3-point goals: Cascade 6 (St. Peter 4, Wilson, Wright); North Marion 3 (Umbenhower, Henry, Kinniburgh).