LAKE STEVENS — The youthful Port Angeles girls basketball team didn’t bother with the frying pan. The Roughriders jumped right into the fire.
Class 4A Lake Stevens, fourth in state last year, beat the 2A Riders 64-31 in the first game of the year for both teams Tuesday night.
Lake Stevens returns four of its top six players.
“We saw how far we have to go,” first-year Port Angeles coach Mike Poindexter said.
After losing big guns Jessica Madison, the all-time top scorer for the Riders, Allison Knowles and Taylyn Jeffers to graduation, Port Angeles is in the rebuilding mode with four players up from JV and a couple of players coming out after missing a couple of years in the sport.
“We’ll be OK,” Poindexter said. “We just really need game experience. We’ll get that soon.”
That’s why the Riders scheduled such a tough team right off the bat.
Playing the best teams always makes a squad stronger, Poindexter said.
Plus, the Riders open the Olympic League season at Kingston on Friday night. League coaches picked Kingston to win the conference championship this season.
“We played Lake Stevens to prepare for Kingston,” Poindexter said.
Lake Stevens did take Port Angeles to class.
“We learned a lot,” Poindexter said.
The youthful Riders had 36 turnovers in the game.
“That was the story of the game,” he said. “Our defense wasn’t great but the real issue was that they converted our turnovers into points.”
It was also a game of quarters with Lake Stevens dominating the first (23-7) and third periods (21-7) but both teams almost even in the second and fourth stanzas where Lake Stevens outscored Port Angeles by a total of 20-17.
“Of course in the fourth, they had their reserves playing,” Poindexter said.
Paxton Rodocker led the Riders with eight points.
Abby Molspre had a game-high 17 points for Lake Stevens while Brooke Pahukoa sank 15.
Lake Stevens 64, Port Angeles 31
Port Angeles 7 12 7 5 — 31
Lake Stevens 23 14 21 6 — 64
Individual Scoring
Port Angeles (31)
Rodocker 8, B. Jones 5, K. Jones 4, Frazier 4, Moseley 4, Hinrichs 3, Johnson 3.
Lake Stevens (64)
Molspre 17, Brooke Pahukoa 15, Goddard 10, Brittany Pahukoa 7, Blackmon 6, Gipson 3, Pilon 2.
Klahowya 42, Chimacum 33
CHIMACUM — The Class 2A Eagles of the Olympic League outscored the 1A Cowboys of the Nisqually League 12-6 in the fourth quarter to get some breathing room in what was a close game.
It was the first game for both teams.
The teams tied 7-7 after one quarter with the Eagles taking a 19-16 lead at halftime.
Klahowya kept the three-point lead, 30-27, at the end of the third quarter.
Cydney Nelson and Lauren Thacker led the Cowboys with nine points each.
Klahowya 42, Chimacum 33
Klahowya 7 12 11 12 — 42
Chimacum 7 9 11 6 — 33
Individual Scoring
Klahowya (42)
Tracy 13, Sally 10, Marina 6, Elise 6, Quincy 5, Allison 2.
Chimacum (33)
Nelson 9, Thacker 9, Cossell 6, Snyder 4, Johnson 4, Baird 1.
Boys Basketball
Chimacum 70, Klahowya 69 (OT)
SILVERDALE — The Cowboys started off their season with an absolute barn-burner Tuesday night.
Landon Cray scored 30 points, including a go-ahead 3-pointer near the end of the fourth quarter, and Rafael Pagasian added 16 to boost Chimacum to a win over the 2A Eagles out of the Olympic League.
Klahowya’s Clark Rose tied things up with a buzzer-beater 3 at the end of the fourth quarter, then the two teams battled back-and-forth in OT.
The Cowboys didn’t pull away until their final possession, when Pagasian found Derek Ajax for a fastbreak lay-up with two seconds to go.
The Cowboys hit eight 3s in the game, with Cray sinking four and Quinn Eldridge three.
“We played good at times, a lot better than we did the other night at the jamboree [in Port Angeles],” Chimacum coach Jim Eldridge said.
Chimacum (1-0 overall) will host 2A North Kitsap tonight in another nonleague affair.
Chimacum 70, Klahowya 69 (OT)
Chimacum 18 11 15 13 13 — 70
Klahowya 10 14 17 16 12 — 69
Individual Scoring
Chimacum (70)
Q. Eldridge 9, Cray 30, Pagasian 17, Dukek 5, Madayag 2, Ajax 6, Downs 1.
Klahowya (69)
Rose 24, Sheets 4, Vallejo 16, Fagan 10, Ganowski 8, Ward 2, Flowers 5.