Meadowdale has work to do

LYNNWOOD

There was good news and bad news as far the Meadowdale girls basketball team was concerned after its second meeting of the season with archrival Jackson.

The bad news was that the Timberwolves prevailed 67-58 to earn a series’ sweep over the Mavericks and moved closer to a Western Conference South Division championship.

The good news is that Meadowdale played well in spurts and that the game afforded the Mavericks a chance to learn more about their squad against one of the best teams in the state.

“We don’t feel like we’ve peaked,” said Meadowdale head coach Dan Taylor. “It’s a good opportunity to learn and we’ve got more to do to play at a high level come playoff time.”

Senior guard Eryn Jones scored a team-high 24 points and junior guard Hanna Fjortoft added 20, but the rest of the Mavericks’ supporting cast contributed only 14 points in what was Meadowdale’s second loss of the season.

Taylor and his coaching staff plan to work on figuring out how to best use their personnel.

“We need to figure out how to not depend on Eryn so much,” Taylor said. “I think we’ll learn from this (game), all of us, players and coaches.”

Meadowdale just wasn’t in sync against Jackson, according to Jones.

“We just didn’t have a good night offensively,” she said. “We didn’t really set up and get into the flow of our offense and run it all the way through. I think we kind of rushed it.”

Jackson senior guard Kristi Kingma scored a career-high 32 points, with senior guard Ashly Bruns adding 13 points. Sophomore guard Erin Feeney had eight points and sophomore guard Chanel Sam and senior guard Ashley Todd had six points apiece.

“When she (Kingma) is on, we have to do something to stop the other people,” Taylor said. “She’s going to get hers. We expected that.”

Meadowdale did a decent job of defense in the halfcourt game, Taylor said, but was unable to contain the rest of the Jackson attack, especially the transition game.

“I think that they just kept beating us with the dribble drive and the dish,” Taylor said. “It was something we were able to stop in the past and I think we were caught up in focusing on them hitting the outside shot.”

The Mavericks have made some significant strides since the start of the season, Jones said. Rebounding was a particular area of concern at the start of the season since most of Meadowdale’s players are 5-feet-8 or smaller. “We’ve improved on that,” Jones said.