By Josh Oullette/NWPrepsNow.com
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The Gonzaga Prep girls basketball team survived a late Lewis and Clark push to hold on for a 52-44 Greater Spokane League victory on Friday night.
The first quarter belonged to G-Prep’s Bullpups (11-1, 10-0) as they ran out to a 21-7 lead thanks to multiple fast-break buckets and Otiona Gildon wreaking havoc in the paint. The 6-foot junior post finished with eight of her 11 points and six of her 12 rebounds in the period.
In the second quarter, the Tigers’ (8-4, 7-2) full-court press began to pay off, holding G-Prep to seven points. But their own offense continued to struggle and LC finished the half trailing 28-15.
“Give them credit; they did a nice job of slowing us down,” Bullpups head coach Mike Arte said. “We’re averaging 69 points a game and you see what they did tonight. … They’re a good defensive team. The best defensive team we’ve faced in the league.”
Lewis and Clark opened the third quarter with a 9-4 run, outscoring the Bullpups 18-12 in the quarter thanks to 3-pointers from Janieva Bates and Lindsay Lee. G-Prep’s Kayla Leland answered with points at crucial times in the quarter, which ended with the Bullpups up 40-33.
“She always does that,” Arte said. “She’s a roadrunner, she’s fast, she can score, she can defend the full court and when she comes in the game everyone looks at her because she weighs 80 pounds. But she’s a player and she’s an athlete. We love bringing her off the bench because she’s a spark plug for us.”
The Tigers managed to close the gap to four points with under a minute left in the fourth quarter. The trio of Bates, Lee and Riley Lupfer led LC’s late drive, only to watch it stall with under a minute left.
G-Prep’s Laura Stockton and Oona Harrington secured the win when they collected the final four points and three rebounds.
“We needed that game. Things have been way to easy for us the past couple weeks and we’ve kind of gotten into a sense of complacency,” Arte said. “We needed LC to stick us a little bit because now we can get our heads turned around and focus on executing and getting better as players.”
Stockton finished with 14 points with Harrington, Leland and Gildon all adding 11 for the Bullpups. Gildon also had 12 rebounds.
Bates led LC with 12 points with Lupfer and Lee adding 11 apiece.
