SEATTLE — His team’s star player had just been poked in the eye. But Dan Taylor didn’t panic.
He knew Eryn Jones endured worse hits before. None of them were likely as weird as this, though.
Jones, a senior guard on the Meadowdale girls basketball team, was standing along the sideline Thursday for what seemed like a standard mid-court inbounds play. But when Jones reached down to grab the ball, she got a surprise.
An official — signaling with his right hand that his 5-second inbounding count had begun — accidentally poked Jones in the right eye during the fourth quarter of Meadowdale’s Class 3A state tournament game against Bainbridge at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.
Meadowdale’s career and single-season leader in points scored, Jones immediately pulled away and winced. At first, it made her laugh, she said. But the humor soon wore off.
“Ow!” she recalled thinking. “That really hurt.”
What was coach Taylor’s reaction to the bizarre incident, which happened when Meadowdale led by 12 points midway through the final quarter? He wasn’t worried.
“She’s been hit harder than that (before). She’s bounced back,” Taylor said.
Fortunately, Jones’ eye was OK, although she said she didn’t see much the next few possessions. It didn’t stop her from making four consecutive free throws in the game’s final 68 seconds.
Jones, a Portland State University recruit, finished with 25 points, five steals and five assists in Meadowdale’s 72-63 loser-out victory versus Bainbridge.
The official, Anton Churlin of the Snohomish County Womens Basketball Officials Association, felt awful about the whole thing, Jones said.
“He totally didn’t mean to” hit Jones in the eye, Jones said. “He apologized.”
A new look: Usually Taylor, head coach of the Meadowdale girls basketball team, and his assistant coaches wear formal, classy clothes for games. But Wednesday the coaches tried a new approach. Hoping that wearing more casual clothing would help players relax and not get too serious, Taylor and his assistants wore blue Meadowdale T-shirts and jeans.
The casual style lasted only one game. After Meadowdale lost a first-round game against Lakes, on Thursday the Mavericks’ coaches switched back to fancy attire.
Said Taylor of the change: “Back to business.”
Keep it down: Taylor confused many fans and reporters Thursday with an odd move in the second quarter. With 5 minutes, 40 seconds remaining in the first half he called a timeout. But instead of huddling with his team on the sideline, like usual, Taylor led players and assistant coaches off the court into a nearby tunnel.
Was Meadowdale forfeiting? Did the team have somewhere more important to go?
Nope. Meadowdale’s band, it turns out, was simply too loud. Positioned in the bleachers on the same corner of the arena as the Mavericks’ bench, the band was drowning out Taylor’s words.
Taylor decided to go where players could hear him. But an official quickly chased down the coach and said they weren’t supposed to leave the court. The solution: Taylor asked the band to lower its volume during timeouts.
Offensive outburst: The Bainbridge girls basketball team scored 21 points in the first quarter of its Thursday loss against Meadowdale. Bainbridge scored as many points in that 8-minute quarter as it tallied altogether in a 32-minute contest Wednesday versus Auburn Riverside.
Tall enough: Matt Gorman is listed on Meadodale’s roster as a 6-foot-3 post player, making him rather undersized for his position.
But if 6-3 is too short to play under the basket, the Mavs senior didn’t get the memo. Spending most of his day in the paint attacking the basket, Gorman scored a team-high 17 points in Meadowdale’s 52-48 win over Mercer Island.
“I’m just doing whatever I can to help us win games,” said Gorman, who went to the free-throw line 16 times Friday, making 11. “We just want to keep going. I try to push around a little bit. I try to [play bigger than my size]. I try to stay inside. I do what I can.”
Meadowdale coach Chad McGuire doesn’t seem to mind that one of his post players is smaller than some teams’ guards.
“He’s a work horse in there,” said McGuire. “We just tell him to go. He does a nice job. He works hard on the boards and does a nice job of drawing fouls.”
Legend has local ties: Mercer Island coach Ed Pepple, an institution in Washington high school sports, has been coaching high school basketball for a while now. To get a feel for just how long, consider this fact: Pepple didn’t get his start coaching basketball at Meadowdale, Meadowdale basketball got its start with Pepple.
Forty-four years and three jobs ago, Pepple left the head coaching job at Fife to become an assistant under Phil Hull at a new school in Lynnwood called Meadowdale, where he stayed for three seasons. To put in another way, Pepple started at Meadowdale in 1964, roughly eight years before current Meadowdale coach McGuire was born. Pepple said his original plan was to move on to coach at Woodway, but instead took the head job at Mark Morris in 1967. From there, it was on to Mercer Island, where he has been for the past 41 seasons, winning 20 league titles and four state titles.
Pepple has at least one other tie to Snohomish county, having played basketball at Everett Community College in 1951.
Time change: To avoid having Meadowdale’s boys and girls teams play at the same time this morning, the boys game against Renton, originally scheduled for 9 a.m. will instead be at 10:30 a.m.
A low-scoring affair: Auburn’s 34-21 win over West Seattle yesterday featured record-tying performances from both teams. The Trojans’ 34 points tied a tournament record for least points in a win, and West Seattle’s 21 points tied the tournament record for lowest losing score.
Herald Writer John Boyle contributed to this report.
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