PASCO — The Peninsula College women nearly beat Lane early this season, but in the Northwest Athletic Conference Final Four semifinals, the Pirates ran into a hot-shooting juggernaut as the Titans buried 12 3-pointers in an 80-63 victory.
Lane (32-0), the defending NWAC champion, won its 45th game in a row. Peninsula had its 23-game winning streak snapped and finished the season with a record of 24-3.
Early this year, Peninsula took Lane to overtime before bowing 81-76. It was the only game all year Lane was taken to overtime and the only game all year the Titans didn’t win by double figures.
This time around, Lane showed why it is the No. 1 team in the NWAC, playing a near-perfect game, dominating the boards early inside (23-12 on rebounds in the first half) and shooting lights out from outside. The Titans built their lead up to 80-49 at one point. After Lane rested its starters, Peninsula was able to close that margin a little, ending the game on a 14-0 run, but it was far too late to affect the outcome.
Entering the fourth quarter, Lane shot 26-for-47 (55.3 percent), while Peninsula shot 19-for-53 (35.8 percent).
Beyond the arc, Lane especially dominated, hitting 12-for-20 while Peninsula shot 2-for-13. That was 30 more points from long range for the Titans.
“They’re tough. They’re really tough,” said Peninsula coach Alison Rose. “In all my years of coaching, I’ve never lost a game shooting 60 percent on our 3-pointers. It’s hard to overcome that kind of shooting.
“We were the underdogs going into that game. We didn’t feel that way, but at the same time, they’re undefeated for a reason,” Rose said.
Rose said that while the Pirates could have defended some of those shots better, for the most part, the Lane shooters were hitting from downtown with a hand in their face.
The Pirates hung tough with the Titans until the final minute of the first half. Lane was up just two possessions at 32-26 when the Titans closed out the final 1:13 of the half on a 7-0 run, including a 3-pointer by Maitlin Young with a couple of seconds left.
Then the Titans came out red-hot in the second half, going on a 9-0 run over three minutes to blow their lead up to 48-26. It took four minutes to turn a close game into a blowout.
The Pirates did battle back and after baskets by Carliese O’Brien and Jelissa Julmist, Peninsula cut the lead to 53-37 with two minutes left in the third.
The Titans responded with four 3-pointers in 1:45 of play to open the plead up to 70-43 early in the fourth quarter, essentially salting the game away at that point.
While the big stars for Lane are Micah Wicks and Emma McDonald, it was Young, a freshman, who did the most damage. She hit five 3-pointers and scored 23. Wick’s had a solid game with 18 points, nine rebounds and seven assists, and Lane’s big post player, Lillee Duffin, had 11 points and 15 rebounds.
Peninsula cruised through the NWAC until the Lane game partly by completely dominating the boards. Against the Titans, however, the Pirates’ size was nullified and Lane finished the game with a 43-37 advantage in rebounds.
For Peninsula, Alecsis Smith led the team with 15 points and eight rebounds while sophomore Alexa Mackey scored 15 in her last game for the Pirates. Another sophomore Ciera Tugade Agasiva scored 14 and Sequim’s Jelissa Julmist had six points and nine rebounds.
“This is a special team. We put ourselves in a position to get a championship,” Rose said.
“That habits were learned, the character that [the players] have, no one can take that away from them,” she said.
In the championship game, Lane faced Walla Walla. Lane and Walla Walla are the only two teams in the NWAC that were able to beat the Pirates this year, with Walla Walla winning 57-55 over Peninsula early in the season.
Lane 80, Peninsula 63
PC 16 10 17 20 — 63
Lane 22 17 25 16 — 80
Peninsula (63) — Smith 15, Mackey 15, Agasiva 14, Julmist 6, Moananu 5, Patrick 4, O’Brien 2, Moss 2.
Lane (80) — Young 23, Wicks 18, McDonald 13, Kanoho 11, Duffin 11, Soto 2, Byrge 2.
