Lady Bearcats take down Lake Stevens in girls basketball

Published 11:36 pm Monday, December 14, 2009

MONROE — The transition to a new coach and a fast-paced offensive style is bound to create some speed bumps for the Monroe Bearcats girls basketball team this season, but having two experienced players help dictate the flow is turning into a huge benefit for first-year head coach Rodney Walker.

The Bearcats weathered a rocky third-quarter performance and turned in a solid finish in a 54-41 Western Conference North Division win over Lake Stevens Monday night at Monroe High School.

Sophomore point guard Suzanna Ohlsen, a second-year starter and the team’s leading scorer last season, ignited the offense with 20 points and six steals and senior Sammi Clark added 15 points and six rebounds as Monroe (3-0 league, 4-1 overall) turned a five-point third-quarter lead into a 12-point cushion with 4 minutes, 46 seconds remaining in the game.

“I always try to down-play it, but she can do it all … she’s a complete player,” Walker said of Ohlsen. “… I’m ecstatic with the girls, now if we could ever figure out how to run our offense we might be dangerous, but we’re still a work in progress.”

Lake Stevens (1-2 league, 1-3 overall) couldn’t capitalize on a sloppy third quarter for Monroe.

The Bearcats turned the ball over on four of their first five possessions to start the second half, but found a way to keep the Vikings at bay until a Sam Peterson bucket jump-started a 7-0 run that cut Monroe’s lead to 32-29 with 3:10 remaining in the third quarter.

Monroe worked the lead out to five points (37-32) by the quarter’s end before Clark and Alyssa Brazel, a sophomore who finished with 10 points, hit back-to-back 3-pointers that essentially put the game away early in the fourth quarter.

“It’s just one of those things where we’re just struggling shooting the basketball,” Lake Stevens head coach Randy Edens said. “We just can’t find opportunities at the basket and we had a couple 3-point shots that rimmed out for whatever reason.

“… Against a solid team you want to take advantage of those opportunities (Monroe’s third- quarter turnovers), because you don’t know if they’re going to come back up, but since we’ve been grinding a little bit offensively those are extra chances that you get and you want to take advantage of them, but for whatever reason we weren’t able to,” Edens said.

Lake Stevens failed to convert several shots and fell behind by as many as 19 points, but a late run helped the Vikings save face.

“We’ve had a couple mental lapses on defense (in previous games),” Edens said. “… We’ve got to clean that up, we’ve got to move on — have a short-term memory.”

Kayla Bostwick, a 6-foot senior, scored a team-high 11 points for Lake Stevens. Junior Meghan Warbis added six points and senior guard and leading scorer Peterson had four points.

The Bearcats are adjusting to a new system implemented by Walker, the former Sultan High School head coach and last season’s Cascade Conference coach of the year, that stresses speed on both ends of the court.

Walker inherited a Monroe team coming off a 10-11 season in 2008-‘09 under former coach Branda Anderson, but the first-year coach has showed a knack for turning teams around while making a three-win Sultan team in 2006-07 into a district qualifier last season.

He admits that the offense will become even more difficult as opposing teams gain better conditioning as the season progresses.

“We always tell the girls ‘be quick, but don’t hurry,’ and when you’re playing that way on defense and you try to do it on offense it’s a tough transition because they’re not used to transitioning and setting it up and slowing it down when they don’t get lay ups,” Walker said of Monroe’s third-quarter troubles. “This being our first year trying to implement our system, you know its a work in progress, but the girls are working hard.”

So far, so good for Walker and Monroe, but the toughest tests are still to come with Wesco North Division games against Marysville-Pilchuck, Stanwood and Oak Harbor fast approaching.

At Monroe H.S.

Lake Stevens911129—41

Monroe1513917—54

Lake Stevens—Goddard 0, Puha 4, Peterson 4, Bostwick 11, Warbis 6, Ch. Burke 3, Co. Burke 2, Schumacher 5, Bri. Pahukoa 0, Bro. Pahukoa 2, Wilson 0. Monroe—Ohlsen 20, Al. Brazel 10, As. Brazel 0, Johnson 0, Alexander 0, Smith 3, Jacobson 0, Murphy 0, Clark 15, Wilkins 4, Snell 2. 3-pointers—Al. Brazel 2, Clark 1, Ohlsen 1, Schumacher 1, Ch. Burke 1. Records—Lake Stevens 1-2 league, 1-3 overall. Monroe 3-0, 4-1.