Cards post quarterfinal win for 2nd straight year

By PAUL SHUGAR
YAKIMA HERALD-REPUBLIC

The title of No. 1 boys basketball team in the state of Washington is officially up for grabs in Class 2A.

Cashmere's Jon Gasbar, left, and Joe Boyle, right, play tough defense against Medical Lake's Colton Curtis on Thursday.   JEFF HALLER/Yakima Herald-Republic View all photos for this story.

For the second season in a row, Medical Lake dispatched Cashmere 48-41 in the quarterfinals of the 2A state tournament Thursday in the SunDome. But unlike last season, the 10th-ranked Cardinals didn’t need double overtime to take care of the No. 1-ranked Bulldogs this year.

In 2004, Medical Lake won despite blowing a 13-point lead late in the contest and even gave Cashmere a chance to win the game in regulation. The Cardinals then battled through two overtimes to pull out a 47-46 victory.

Cashmere made no secret of the fact it looked forward to getting some revenge against Medical Lake. But the Bulldogs making their emotions so well-known, especially in the pages of the Yakima Herald-Republic sports section, ended up only hurting them.

“We read in the paper that they wanted to play us so bad and get revenge that it motivated us to play hard,” Medical Lake guard Tanner Tareski said.

The Cardinals came out looking like the team that lost in double overtime, building a 19-9 lead by the end of the first quarter. Center Steven Wesley led the way with six of his seven points in the first frame.

Only seven points is an off night for Wesley, who averaged 19.7 points and 13.5 rebounds per game. But the 6-foot-5 center made up for his poor offensive numbers with strong play on the glass. He grabbed a game-high 17 rebounds for the Cardinals.

“The last couple weeks I haven’t had to do anything,” Wesley said. “At the beginning of the season, I had to do it all. Lately I’ve been able to just play.”

Tareski ended up picking up the scoring slack for Medical Lake. He finished with a team-high 13 points, and Colton Curtis and Andrew Richardson both chipped in nine. Wesley’s seven points and Kevin Broadnax’s eight rounded out the Cardinals’ balanced scoring attack.

“(Wesley) makes us so good and that’s why we have four guys who’ve had 20 points in a game,” Tareski said. “We have a lot of offensive threats who can get it done.”

After the quick start, Medical Lake slowed down in the second quarter to take a 24-18 lead to the locker room at halftime. They got another spurt to start the second half, scoring the first seven points to build a 31-18 lead.

From there, Cashmere’s poor shooting kept the Bulldogs  from ever really cutting back into the lead. The Bulldogs finished 15 of 46 from the field (32.6 percent) and they were only 61.5 percent from the foul line.

Guard Matt Caples led Cashmere and was the only player in double figures with 14 points on 5-for-16 shooting from the field. Michael Miller, who led the Bulldogs with 18.1 points per game this season, managed only seven points and was 3 of 10 from the field.

Poor free-throw shooting from Medical Lake — the Cardinals were 52.2 percent from the foul line for the game — allowed Cashmere to stay in the game and threaten a little in the fourth. The Bulldogs scored the first four points of the fourth quarter to pull with seven, 34-27, with 5:42 remaining.

But Medical Lake coach Arnold Brown made sure his team pulled things back together so there would be no repeats of last season’s collapse and overtime heroics.

“When it started looking like that, I was like, ‘Hold on guys,’” Brown said. “We just gave up a few turnovers to allow them back into the game. They just needed to stay aggressive and stop making bad passes. We just got ahead and started to clock watch.”