Lynnwood girls oust Stanwood, earn a shot at fourth place

TACOMA — One day after a turnover in the closing seconds doomed the Lynnwood girls basketball team in a crushing one-point loss that ended its state-title dreams, the Royals found themselves in a similar situation.

The clock was winding down, and Lynnwood had the ball with a chance for the game-winner.

This time, the Royals came through.

Lynnwood senior guard Kaprice Boston drove to the basket for a buzzer-beating layin to give the No. 10-seeded Royals a 62-60 win over No. 5-seed Stanwood in a loser-out Class 3A consolation game Friday morning in the Tacoma Dome.

“My eyes were closed when I shot it, so I thought I’d bricked it,” Boston said. “And then I opened my eyes right as the ball was going through the hoop, and I was like, ‘I really just made that shot.’ I was in shock. I’m still in shock. I can’t believe it happened.”

The victory secured Lynnwood a fourth consecutive state trophy and advanced the Royals (22-5) to the fourth/sixth-place game against No. 7-seed Kamiakin at 8 a.m. Saturday.

And while the dramatic win doesn’t quite erase the sting of Thursday’s quarterfinal loss to top-seeded Bishop Blanchet, it makes the “bittersweet a little bit sweeter,” Lynnwood coach Brent Hudson said. And it gives the Royals’ seniors one more game.

“It feels really good,” Boston said. “Yesterday’s loss was tough. Losing by one is never fun. I’d rather lose by five. But I think we bounced back pretty good. I’m excited to be here and play one more game.”

With the score tied at 60 and about 20 seconds remaining in the game, Stanwood junior Jillian Heichel grabbed an offensive rebound that would’ve given the Spartans (20-6) a chance to run down the clock for the last shot. But instead, Stanwood turned the ball over.

Spartans coach Dennis Kloke said afterward that he was trying to call a timeout prior to the turnover.

“I was yelling at the top of my lungs for a timeout,” Kloke said. “My girls got so excited — they didn’t realize when they got the offensive rebound that they didn’t have to shoot.”

As the clock wound down on Lynnwood’s ensuing possession, Boston received a pass near the left elbow from junior teammate Valerie Bell. Boston then drove to the hoop with a “Eurostep” move and laid the ball off the glass for the game-winner as the Royals topped their Wesco 3A rivals for the third time this season.

“We got a similar look that we got yesterday, and it just proved that putting the ball in Kaprice’s hands at the end on (center Kelsey Rogers’) side creates good things for us,” Hudson said. “… We got the ball into Kaprice’s hands, got (Stanwood) a little bit scattered and she finished just in time.”

Boston, a Northern Arizona University-bound guard, scored 14 of her 22 points in the second half and finished with seven rebounds. Rogers, a 6-foot-1 senior, led Lynnwood with 23 points, and senior Reilly Walsh added 12 points and five assists for the Royals.

Heichel led Stanwood with 19 points and 12 rebounds. Ashley Alter added 11 points, and Kaitlin Larson had 10 points and eight rebounds for the Spartans.

Stanwood jumped out to an early 7-0 lead and was in front most of the contest, but Lynnwood never let the deficit reach double digits. The Royals took their first lead during a back-and-forth third quarter, then answered a Stanwood run with an early-fourth-quarter surge that set up an entertaining finish.

With less than three minutes remaining, Rogers hit a jumper and Boston made a layin off an in-bounds pass to give Lynnwood a one-point edge with 1:12 left to play. Then after Stanwood junior Kayla Frazier hit a pair of free throws, Rogers made one of two from the line to tie it at 60 with 51.2 seconds remaining.

Lynnwood then forced the pivotal Stanwood turnover to set the stage for Boston’s heroics.

“I’m just proud of the girls because (there were) a lot of reasons they could’ve given up today, whether it was a tough loss yesterday, a 9 a.m. start today (or our struggles) in the first half,” Hudson said. “A lot of reasons they could have just put their heads down, but they didn’t.”

Stanwood graduates just one senior from this year’s team, which earned the program’s first trip to the Tacoma Dome since 1998. While the Spartans lost both their games in the Hardwood Classic — Stanwood fell to Lincoln in Thursday’s quarterfinals — Kloke said his team gained valuable experience.

“This game was probably our best game of the year, even though we lost,” Kloke said. “If we’d have played like this Thursday, we wouldn’t have been in this situation. But you can’t go back. And all my juniors and sophomores have now experienced the dome, (so in the future) we won’t have those jitters.”

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