Furious fourth isn’t enough

March 15, 2009 by Scott Spruill

YAKIMA, Wash. — Remember the entire body of work. The 23 victories, the thrilling comebacks, the conference title, the district championship, the state trophy all the fun in between. Don’t dwell too much on the red-faced disappointment of the finish. It’s part of the total experience, to be sure, but don’t let the sting take away from the shine.

Those are the thoughts Prosser girls coach Mark Little is hoping his Mustangs will take away from this season, which ended Saturday with a 63-49 loss to West Valley of Spokane for third and sixth place in the Class 2A state tournament. Following their tough setback to unbeaten Archbishop Murphy in Friday’s semifinals, the Mustangs appeared out of sorts from the start and were never able to mount a serious run at the young Eagles.

Fatigued? Drained of emotion? None of those issues mattered much to Little, who took complete blame for the loss. “If they’re not ready, that’s my fault. It’s certainly not the kids’ fault,” he said. “We thought we were ready to go, but it wasn’t there today. We’ve all played the same amount of games, so everybody’s tired. I just needed to do a better job.”

Twelve turnovers in the first half helped dig Prosser a 31-20 hole, and West Valley’s 10-0 run in the middle of the third quarter pretty much sealed the deal. Little worked in several different lineups and schemes looking for a spark but nothing seemed to work. “We kept saying, ‘What can we change?,’” he said. “We kept searching for something but it just snowballed on us.”

West Valley’s 5-foot-11 sophomores Shanique Nilles and Hannah Love combined for 14 of their 35 points in the third quarter and helped the Eagles push out to a 51-28 lead heading into the final period. “You can die on this day, but we came with a great amount of energy,” said WV coach Lorin Carlon, who starts four sophomores. “We played great defense, and we answered (Prosser) every time they made a run. The kids really came of age here. Toward the end of league they started to realize how well they could play.”

In the final game of her stellar career, Prosser senior Lacie French went out firing, scoring 21 points on 9-for-15 shooting with three of Prosser’s five 3-pointers. Another three assists gave the CWAC co-MVP a tournament-high 18 in the four games. “I told Lacie how sad I was to have her just one year,” said Little, who returned to the head job after 12 years. “She’s such a great kid and a wonderful competitor. That’s always the toughest part of the end of a season, saying goodbye to the seniors.”

Prosser awoke from its offensive funk in the fourth quarter, scoring 21 points with 3-pointers from French, Tamara Jones and Kelsey Evans. Jones, who scored nine of her 15 points in the last six minutes, turned in another double-double with 11 rebounds, three assists, three steals and three blocks. In eight state games, the sophomore forward has scored 144 points.

Prosser finished 23-3 with the program’s sixth trophy overall and third in a row. Sustaining that run of hardware was impressive considering the Mustangs graduated Gonzaga-recruit Claire Raap off the 2007 team and career-scoring leader Jordan Brown off the ‘08 squad. “What were we, 23-3? That’s hard to do with a new coach and a bunch of new kids,” said Little, who had three other seniors in addition to French — Danielle Morrow, Dana Morrow and Kelsey Evans. “Those four were the backbone of our season and what a fantastic season it was.”