MUKILTEO — For three quarters at Kamiak High School on Friday, King’s girls basketball couldn’t quite shake the home team.
After pulling ahead by 11 points late in the second quarter, King’s got blitzed by a 9-2 Kamiak run to cut the score to 26-22 at halftime. Throughout the third, it seemed like Kamiak had a response any time King’s tried to pull ahead, and that continued into the fourth when Kamiak sophomore Annika Hastings hit a shot to cut it to 49-43 with just over six minutes remaining.
For the reigning 1A state finalists, the thought-process was simple.
“Just staying positive,” King’s senior Kaitlin Cramer said. “(Shots) weren’t falling that normally do, so just staying out of our heads and just keep pushing.”
Alongside fellow senior Kaleo Anderson and junior Molly Kyler, Cramer sparked a 14-4 fourth-quarter run for the visiting Knights (2-2), who held the home Knights (1-3) without a field goal in that five-minute span en route to securing a 66-53 win.
Anderson, The Herald’s reigning All-Area Girls Basketball Player of the Year and ESPN’s No. 70 overall recruit in the country, led with 23 points, 13 rebounds and four assists. Cramer scored 17 of her 21 points in the second half, and picked up nine rebounds. Kyler had six points and five rebounds, and sophomore Monica Taylor had eight points, five rebounds and two steals off the bench.
While King’s returned several key contributors from last year’s team, coach Dan Taylor is still figuring out the best ways to utilize this year’s roster in the early goings of this season. Despite the game remaining close until the final couple minutes, 12 different players entered the game for the visitors, with most of the seven reserves receiving fairly substantial minutes relative to that of a typical bench role.
As the Knights try to find their groove, Taylor is leaving no stone unturned.
“We’re trying to figure things out,” Taylor said. “We’re playing different personnel in different spots and everything. So my message (was) telling them we can’t miss a beat when we sub people in. That plus/minus factor, there’s got to be the momentum going our way, whether this girl comes in or that girl comes in.”
Hastings led Kamiak with 14 points, while senior Avery Goldwire chipped in 10 points and seven rebounds. The Knights fell behind 24-13 in the second quarter, but Goldwire and sophomore Kylie Villareal (8 points) teamed up to bring the game back within two possessions entering halftime.
After driving into the lane for a pull-up jumper, Goldwire picked Anderson’s pocket near midcourt and took it to the bucket for a layup. Cramer responded with a shot inside, but Villareal hit a long two-point shot and a 3-pointer from opposite corners, the latter coming as time expired to cut it to 26-22.
Playing under first-year head coach Dylan Boling, who coached the JV boys at Cascade High School last season, Kamiak is looking to establish an identity of being hard to play against.
“We’re a fighting team,” Boling said. “It doesn’t matter how far down we are, we’re going to come back and we’re still going to come out with everything we have.”
Anderson opened the second half with a 3 for King’s, but Kamiak senior Maya Goldwire and Hastings helped whittle the deficit down to one point, each hitting a jumper before Hastings nailed two free throws.
That’s as close as it would get, as the visiting Knights started to surge ahead with an 11-0 run.
Cramer extended the lead to 31-28 with an inside shot before Anderson fed her with a pass across the paint for another layup about a minute later. Anderson continued facilitating, grabbing a rebound and driving down the court before kicking out to Kyler, who drew an ‘And-1’ driving to the hoop. She missed the ensuing free throw, but Anderson grabbed another rebound and kicked it out to Cramer for a 3-pointer. Cramer ended the run by making a nice move to set up an underhanded layup, boosting the lead to 40-28 with about 3:25 left in the third quarter.
“During the third quarter, I think once the starters got back in, it was just like, a different ball-game,” said Anderson, a Virginia Tech commit. “We were like, ‘We’re not going to lose this game,’ and I think it was just being poised, executing and just doing what we do best.”
But Kamiak refused to be pushed aside, cutting it within five points heading into the fourth thanks to timely field goals from Avery Goldwire, Hastings and Villareal, as well as a few free throws.
“I think it was our defense keeping that pressure on them the whole game,” Boling said. “Them denying (Anderson), I think, was key to keeping it close.”
However, just as she had in the first three quarters, Anderson scored the first point of the fourth, drawing a foul underneath the basket and sinking one of two free throws. She assisted Cramer on the following possession, and King’s strung together a couple more quick baskets to extend the lead to 10.
While both sides had created second-chance scoring opportunities via offensive rebounding in the first quarter, King’s shored up their side defensively while continuing to attack the glass on offense. Cramer and Anderson each scored on putback layups, following up their own shots to keep the run going before Kyler pushed the lead to 59-43 on a coast-to-coast layup with less than 2:30 remaining.
“We just needed to want the ball more,” Cramer said. “We were kind of just watching it. I think we just made that switch at halftime, just like dog mentality.”
Kamiak never stopped fighting, scoring some points off turnovers after Taylor took out King’s starters, but the visitors finally pulled away for a 66-53 victory after trying to create more distance all game.
Through four games, King’s girls basketball still feels like it’s working to find its groove, but Friday’s win marked a step in the right direction in a hard-fought battle between two Knights.
“I think it’s a little (better) each game,” Anderson said. “I think I’ve seen for us, our first game (a 68-61 loss to Glacier Peak on Dec. 2) wasn’t our best game, but each game we’ve gone, we’ve improved. … So I think (we’re) continuing to grow as we go along.”
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