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Lady Jacks improving as season winds down
The standings don't necessarily reflect it, but the Quincy High School girls basketball team is playing a bit better recently. What the standings do reflect, however, is that the Lady Jacks are close to clinching a district playoff spot.
Quincy dropped a pair of games last week — 47-34 to Wapato on Saturday and 68-58 to Othello on Thursday.
The Wolves represent a bad match-up for Quincy, but the Lady Jacks were able to play one of their best games of the season two days prior at home against the Huskies.
Othello entered the game with an 11-4 record and a big height advantage over Quincy, but after being outscored 10-0 at the start of the first period, the Lady Jacks responded in a big way. They took the lead in the second quarter and held an advantage for the majority of the rest of the game before allowing the Huskies to catch up and take the lead for good in the fourth quarter.
Despite the loss, Quincy can take heart in its improvement against Othello — it lost by 30 points, 58-28, to the Huskies in the teams' first match-up on Jan. 10.
"We're playing better," head coach Cully Donovan said. "These teams that blew us out the first time, were playing better against them this time."
In the last two weeks, the Lady Jacks have also played well in a loss to state No. 1 Prosser, and posted a big win over Grandview on Feb. 6. Quincy, with its 4-12 record, is currently tied for seventh in the Central Washington Athletic Conference with the Greyhounds. The Lady Jacks are two games ahead of ninth-place Toppenish with two games to go, meaning that one more Quincy win or one more Wildcats loss will clinch a playoff spot for the Lady Jacks.
Quincy is playing better lately because its turning the ball over less, playing better defense and getting increased offensive contributions from its core of juniors, including Taylor Kunkel and Dayanna Lopez.
Quincy finishes its regular season at Ephrata (7-9) tonight and against Ellensburg (11-5) at home on Friday. Toppenish concludes its campaign with Wapato (10-6) and Grandview.
One Lady Jack, in particular, is excited about having another chance at defeating the Tigers.
"I can't wait to play there," said post Colleen Knodell, the team's only senior who scored a season-high 19 points in Quincy's 52-41 loss to Ephrata on Jan. 17. "We get one more shot. I think (we can win tonight)."
• Despite its 9-7 record and current third-place standing in the CWAC, Quincy boys basketball coach Wade Petersen and the Jacks players aren't perfectly content with the way they've been playing this season. That's because the team has high expectations for itself; it's also because it has played inconsistently for most of the season.
But the one thing that the Jacks have to feel good about heading into the district playoffs is the way they've played against the conference's best teams.
Quincy responded to a potentially devastating come-from-ahead loss to Othello last Thursday with a statement-making 63-52 win over league-leading Wapato on Saturday. That win was the Jacks' second against the Wolves on the season; they also knocked off second-place Grandview twice, including arguably their best game of the year in a 75-61 win over the Greyhounds on Feb. 6.
The Jacks' 4-0 record against the conference leaders makes them the only team to beat Wapato and Grandview twice this season and makes up for the fact that they've gone just 2-3 against the three teams with the worst record in the conference (Ephrata, Prosser and East Valley).
So how have they done it? Against Wapato, Quincy's defense limited probable CWAC Player of the Year Willie Blodgett to two sub-par games and caused the Wolves to have two poor shooting nights. Against Grandview, Quincy won with offense; Petersen decided to play at a faster pace to match the aptly-named Greyhounds and make scoring on transition a focal point of the team's execution.
Quincy is tied for third in the CWAC with Othello heading into the season's final week, and right now the Jacks are in fairly good shape in terms of clinching an all-important top-four seed; two scenarios that would doom them to fifth place and a loser-out first round district playoff game are finishing tied for fourth with Toppenish and finishing tied for fourth with Ephrata. The Jacks have already lost twice to the Wildcats, and would end up with two losses to Ephrata in the second scenario.
• Last week, Quincy assistant wrestling coach Mike Wallace stopped by the Post-Register newsroom and started to chat about the Jacks' prospects at the coming weekend's regional tournament in Ellensburg.
"We're thinking we can get six (to state)," Wallace said. "Seven with a little divine intervention."
Unfortunately for the Jacks, they didn't get that divine intervention. Not even close.
Head coach Manny Ybarra has to be happy with the three Jacks wrestlers who are going to this weekend's Mat Classic in Tacoma — Manny Ybarra, Tim Silvas and Michael Reyes. But he has to be disappointed that there aren't several more of their teammates joining them.
Three Quincy wrestlers that made state last year didn't advance to state this year — Armando Herrera, Breck Webley and Max Melburn. All three of them were injured at various points of the season and missed several weeks, and perhaps that missed mat time finally caught up to the talented trio.
Contact Doug Flanagan at reporter@qvpr.com or through Facebook:
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COMMENTS
KurtisJ:
You are right...the boys hoops is at best a coin flip heading into the final two games of the season. The girls can snag seventh alone with a win over Ephrata tonight and good luck to the three wrestlers heading to state and with some luck...Carlos Magana and Baldo Valdovinos can sneak into the tourney from their alternate spots.
