S Whidbey girls fall to undefeated Knights in a bruiser

Published 4:00 pm Wednesday, February 1, 2006

Until the third quarter of Friday’s contest between the Lady Falcons and undefeated King’s, it looked as though South Whidbey would pull off the upset of the year.

It would have been a nice birthday present for Falcon Coach John Pyrtek — his 50th was celebrated before the game.

But the birthday candles stayed in the box. South Whidbey lost 66-49, but the score doesn’t begin to tell the tale.

Knight Sarah Strand didn’t pick up the Kings’ first points until three minutes into the quarter, quickly followed by Falcon Lindsey Newman’s fast break and layup for two.

Scoring stayed even — the Falcons led 14-13 at the first break — as the Knights couldn’t stop the sisters Newman, who combined for 38 on the night.

“Our game plan was to take it to them in hope of getting them in major foul trouble,” Coach Pyrtek said. “We wanted to score 10 points in the paint, then 10 from the line and finally 12 from treys beyond the arc.”

Ball handling in the clutch is a King specialty but, at least for two quarters, South Whidbey gave as good as they got.

“If we had shot better from the line in the first half and made even half of the easy ones we missed, we could have had a 10-point lead and scored over 40 against a team that gives up only 38 a game,” Pyrtek added.

At the half, the Falcons were down by one point, 33-32, and life was good.

Following a nice jump rope exhibition by the young ladies from South Whidbey Intermediate School, Falcons co-captain Caitie Newman unleashed her own version of rope-a-dope against the Kings. She started the second half by stealing the ball and scoring, times three.

Till then, the Falcons had also effectively shut down senior Kings guard Sara Mosiman.

Mosiman’s frustration with the South Whidbey surge resulted in a nasty display in the third, when the University of Washington-bound player grabbed Marcella Litwiller by the throat, then feigned a fall to cover it up.

It was the equivalent of a face mask penalty in the NFL, but surprisingly, the referees didn’t eject Mosiman from the game.

King’s continued to step up their physical presence, tightening up their precision tactics and dominating play to the end. The Falcons began taking wild chances — long balls flung across court that were picked off and such — and couldn’t seem to drop the ball through the net.

By the fourth, the Knights were hitting the target like a metronome and gradually pulled ahead for good.

“They abandoned their man-to-man defense and went to a four-person zone with one kid playing Caitie man to man,” Pyrtek said. “We were unable to find the key to that adjustment on their part.”

Eaton agreed.

“They went to a box on Caitie and tagged her,” she said. “It threw off our offensive strategy.”

Caitie Newman had one of her best nights. “We’re disappointed but it was a good game; we left it all out there.”

The sisters Newman and co-captain Jessi Eaton played the entire game.

The girls faced Cedarcrest Tuesday for the 3A spot at districts — Kings and Archbishop Murphy have already qualified in the 2A slot. The Lady Falcons welcome ATM for their final home stand, 7 p.m. Friday in Erikson Gym.