For a few moments in their state semifinal Friday afternoon, Lynden's girls had their coach completely perplexed. Ron Adams didn't like what he saw on the scoreboard, and he couldn't believe what he saw in his players.

So, after giving up a 7-0 run to West Valley to fall behind 18-13 in the second quarter, it was time to talk about it.

"The body language I saw said they would rather be doing anything other than playing in a state semifinal, and I didn't understand that," Adams said. "It wasn't a timeout about Xs and Os, it was about that body language."

The Lions snapped out of their daze right then, with Brandi Benner hitting back-to-back 3-pointers that sparked a 10-0 burst that ran into the third quarter and sent Lynden on its way to a 45-35 victory over the young Eagles from Spokane.

With a core of three seniors -- Benner, Jill Toronchuk and Hannah Swanson -- who have played together on varsity all four years, the Lions have bounced back from a 20-point loss in their district championship to pound three state opponents with defense, grudgingly yielding 24, 32, 35 points.

"It made us humble and forced us to work on some things," Benner said of the 53-33 district loss to Archbishop Murphy. "Mostly it was about defense and since then we've done a lot better. We've tried to make teams work hard for everything they get."

Adams opted to use more zone defense Friday rather than the man-to-man scheme that dominated the first two days. It was just as effective with West Valley held to 26-percent shooting.

"We wanted to mix things up on West Valley because they're a young team in the third day of the tournament," the coach said. "We tried man at first and we didn't like what we were getting. Plus, yesterday (against Ellensburg) was a real slugfest and it took something out of us. The zone helped, and we eliminated most their open shots."

West Valley stayed close, though, and when Shanique Nilles scored the first five points of the final period the Eagles were within 34-32. But a team that starts four sophomores couldn't sustain the rally, and over the final five minutes WV went 1-for-8 with four turnovers.

"We knew we were an older, more experienced team and we had to take advantage of that," Benner said. "We've wanted this for a long time and this was our chance."

Toronchuk led the fourth-ranked Lions (22-4) with 11 points and nine rebounds, helping her team to a 43-33 advantage on the boards. Nilles paced West Valley (20-6) with 14 points and eight rebounds.