MONROE — Swat! Swish!
Those were the two sounds the crowd heard most often when Monroe’s 6-foot-6 Kirsten Thompson touched the ball.
Thompson had seven blocked shots and 17 points to lead the Bearcats girls basketball team to a 69-45 victory over the Mountlake Terrace Hawks in the first round of the Class 4A Northwest District playoffs on Feb. 25.
With the victory, Monroe (17-4 overall) moves on to play Lake Stevens at 8 p.m. on Saturday in the Marysville-Pilchuck High School gym. Mountlake Terrace (10-11) must play a loser-out game against Edmonds-Woodway at 2 p.m. Saturday at Marysville-Pilchuck.
“We’re pretty strong inside,” Monroe coach Alan Dickson said. “One of our goals was to out-rebound them and we did a good job there. I think (Mountlake Terrace) played very well for their size.”
Size did matter in this game, as Thompson had 5-11 teammates Karissa Barnes and Kelsey Kolrud on either side of her for much of the game. Thompson enjoyed a 6-inch height advantage over Terrace’s tallest player, 6-foot Kristie Coppin, and the rest of the Hawks stand around 5-foot-8.
“I couldn’t do anything about the height difference,” said Coppin, who finished with 14 points, six rebounds and three steals. “We tried to get (Thompson) in the air and go around her. It didn’t work too well though.”
During the Hawks’ first possession of the third quarter, Thompson had three blocked shots and Barnes added another.
“It’s good to get the nice blocks,” Thompson said. “The ones that make the crowd go, ‘Ooh, Yeah!’”
Monroe methodically built its lead, going up by five points after one quarter and taking a 10-point advantage into the locker room at halftime. Despite the lead, Dickson wasn’t satisfied with his team’s first-half performance.
“I chewed them out a little bit at halftime,” Dickson said. “They were settling for the easy shots, the 3-pointers, and that’s what Mountlake Terrace wanted us to do.”
One of the players inspired by Dickson’s halftime speech was reserve Tianna Moriarity. The junior forward finished with five points, five rebounds, three assists and a block, all in the second half.
“I think she’s the best sixth man in the league,” said Dickson of Moriarity. “She’s one of the team leaders in assists. She could start, but then I would lose her fire coming off the bench.”
Annie Everett matched Coppin with a team-high 14 points for Mountlake Terrace.
Chris Beatty is a writer for The Herald in Everett.
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