PORT ANGELES — Port Angeles made quick work of a short-handed Sequim team, holding the Wolves to just 14 percent shooting from the field in a 63-26 Class 2A District 2/3 semifinal.
The top-seeded Roughriders led from wire-to-wire Thursday night to earn the win in the rubber match in the season series and advance to their fourth straight district title game dating back to 2018.
Port Angeles faced a familiar district championship foe in No. 2 seeded South Puget Sound League champs White River (19-3) at 5 p.m. Saturday, after press deadline, at Highline High School in Burien.
Sequim (18-4) faced Enumclaw (16-5) in the third/fourth place game at Highline at 1 p.m. Saturday.
Port Angeles was again able to exploit its advantage defensively due to the absence of injured post Jelissa Julmist and guard Bobbie Mixon, both of whom are out for the season with knee injuries.
Sequim also lost one of its best defenders, senior Hannah Wagner, to an apparent knee injury early in the contest.
“We understand missing people, we are missing Catie Brown who was part of our near win against [Class 4A No. 2] Lake Stevens, one of our best games of the season,” Port Angeles coach Michael Poindexter said.
“They are not quite the same [as the team that beat the Riders 60-55 on Jan. 11], though they beat Enumclaw without her and Enumclaw is a good team.
For us, Lexie Smith and Paige Mason are stepping into that Catie Brown role and coming into their own, especially in the 1-3-1 and the run-and-jump [man press] defenses, so we aren’t the same team either,” Poindexter said.
The Riders 1-3-1 defense was as fierce as ever, forcing 30 Wolves’ turnovers in the game as portions of the contest effectively turned into layup lines for Port Angeles senior Eve Burke and junior Anna Petty.
Burke led all scorers with 19 points, including a masterful backdoor cut and reverse layup while being fouled to close out her night.
“Her excellence is such a quiet, consistent excellence. It’s a beautiful thing,” Poindexter said of Burke, the program’s highest-scoring player since all-time leader Jessica Madison (1,896 points) graduated in 2011. Burke is now at 1,155 for her career despite being limited to a 10-game junior season due to the pandemic.
Petty added 15 points, doled out a team-high eight assists and led the squad with seven steals. She scored six points in the third quarter when Burke, the team’s leading scorer, was forced to sit with three fouls.
Bailee Larson added 12 points, four assists and four steals while running herself ragged at the bottom of the Riders’ 1-3-1.
“Bailee Larson, [assistant] Jenn Rogers talked about it in the locker room, but Bailee is the girls at the bottom of our 1-3-1 and she’s our point guard and its exhausting,” Poindexter said. “We’ve had to take timeouts to ask ‘Can we stay in this defense?’ It’s up to her and what she can handle and she has so much work to do in that defense.”
Sequim dropped to No. 9 in the WIAA RPI and will likely need to beat Enumclaw, get some help in the form of an upset in other district games and get the benefit of the doubt from the brand-new state tournament seeding committee to break back into the top eight and a seed-protected state regional contest and state trip to Yakima.
“We didn’t play a good game tonight but the girls played with heart,” coach Joclin Julmist said. “We just couldn’t make anything and turned the ball over too many times. PA played a great game, they shot the lights out and played great defense.”
Port Angeles 63, Sequim 26
Seq. 5 9 10 2 — 26
PA 15 17 17 14 — 63
Sequim (26) — Vaara 11, Bates 4, Wagner 3, Bacon 3, Smith 2, Johnson 1, Green, Herman, Stephens, Turella, Bloomenrader.
Port Angeles (63) — Burke 19, Petty 15, Larson 12, Mason 5, Smith 5, Williams 3, Sprague 2, Kibe 2, McGoff, Gedelman.
Dave Logan/for Peninsula Daily News Port Angeles’ Eve Burke drives to the hoop between the defense of Sequim’s Lauryn Stephens, left, and Hannah Bates during the Riders’ 63-26 district semifinal win over the Wolves.
