Jackson earns state tournament berth
Published 9:00 pm Saturday, February 17, 2007
MARYSVILLE – Mission accomplished, now it’s time to relax – sort of.
The Jackson Timberwolves punched their ticket to the 4A state tournament with a 54-43 victory over the Lake Stevens Vikings in a 4A District 1 semifinal girls basketball game Saturday night at Marysville-Pilchuck High School.
Jackson (20-2 overall), the Wesco South No. 1 seed, advances to Saturday’s 6 p.m. 4A District championship game versus Snohomish, the Wesco North No. 3, at Jackson High School.
“To win this game and to play for the district championships, takes so much pressure off,” Jackson head coach Jeannie Thompson said.
To earn the berth Jackson had to fight through a tough Lake Stevens team that a year ago defeated the Timberwolves in the same situation in the district tournament.
After the loss to the Vikings, Jackson then had to fight through the losers’ bracket before earning the school’s first trip to state.
This year Thompson and the Timberwolves wanted none of that added pressure.
“There is so much nerves on (the semfinal game) because you know it’s an automatic bid. You don’t want to have to fight through the loser bracket. The last couple of years when we were in a situation like this we got shaky. Tonight our experience finally came through,” Thompson said.
And it was that experience that came through when Jackson needed it.
Jackson pounded the ball inside to senior post player Brittany Eskridge in the fourth quarter and Eskridge came through.
The Oregon State-bound senior scored eight of her 12 points in the quarter and the Timberwolves turned a three-point lead into a nine-point advantage with just over four minutes remaining.
Eskridge, who played sparingly in the first three quarters because of foul trouble, grabbed a game-high 12 rebounds and had four blocked shots.
“She got into early foul trouble, which slowed our offense down. Our kids that came off the bench did a great job in the first half, buying time for us to get her back into the game and to use her height,” Thompson said.
Junior point guard Kristi Kingma scored a game-high 21 points, 10 in the second quarter and senior Michelle Addington added nine.
Jackson took a 16-11 first-quarter lead before the Vikings got hot.
Led by Ashley Housden’s nine second-quarter points the Vikings took a 23-21 lead with two minutes remaining and entered halftime behind 28-27.
“We knew Lake Stevens was going to play us hard. They are very well coached, very tall, and very long. They have a lot of offensive weapons. We knew we were going to have to battle their size and be able to hit our shots from the outside and be able to rebound on the defensive end,” Thompson said.
Housden finished with 15 points and nine rebounds and Mary Ochiltree added nine for Lake Stevens.
The Vikings (15-7), the Wesco North’s No. 2 seed, will face Kamiak in a loser-out game at 6 p.m. Wednesday at Marysville-Pilchuck High School.
At Marysville-Pilchuck H.S.
Lake Stevens1116610-43
Jackson16121016-54
Lake Stevens-Ochiltree 9, Housden 15, Kruse 2, Tate 6, B. Tri 8, Gallagher 3. Jackson-Bruns 7, Kingma 21, Todd 3, Sam 2, Addington 9, Eskridge 12. 3-pointers-Bruns 1, Kingma 2, Todd 1.
