Chehalis' Nike McClure looks for a clear shot against Bellingham during their 2A Regional matchup in Tumwater, Saturday afternoon.
Chehalis' Tori Weeks (left), scrambles to grab the ball from Bellingham's Joelle Zamora during the two teams' matchup in Tumwater for 2A Regionals.
Chehalis Head Coach, Henri Weeks, speaks with his team during a timeout at the Lady Bearcats' matchup against Bellingham. Chehalis won the 2A Regional matchup, sending them to state.
Chehalis' Tiana Parker (top right) grabs the rebound from the Bellingham defense during their 2A Regional game in Tumwater Saturday afternoon.
Chehalis' Nike McClure reaches for the rebound during the Bearcats' matchup against Bellingham Saturday in Tumwater for WIAA Regionals.
TUMWATER — All things considered, the Bearcats should have been jumping for joy here Saturday afternoon.
The fact that they were not — after a 69-51 rout of Bellingham in the regional round of the State 2A girls basketball playoffs — speaks to their own goals for the remainder of the season.
District 4 champion W.F. West let Bellingham — the No. 4 seed out of District 1/2 — hang around a little bit longer than it would have liked before knocking the Red Raiders out in the fourth quarter, and sealing a fourth-straight trip to the State 2A tournament in Yakima.
"We were just making some uncharacteristic defensive breakdowns and brain-farts," Bearcat coach Henri Weeks said. "We come down and run some great offense in the first, and second half, even, and then we'd have some breakdown to where it's like, 'Holy cow, how long are we going to keep that up?'"
The Bearcats, despite all that, led 18-11 after a quarter — a figure diminished a bit, considering this same Bearcat squad led top-ranked Mark Morris by a 22-9 margin after a quarter eight days prior.
"If we come out like we did against Mark Morris, we blow this game out by 35, maybe 40 points," Weeks said. "We didn't have that tonight, but I'm thankful that we could still get a win in that situation."
W.F. West stretched its lead to 36-24 at halftime, but still didn't feel comfortable.
"We really didn't expect them to be that good. We kind of underestimated them," Bearcat forward Julie Spencer said. "We didn't play to the best of our abilities, and we weren't serious enough. We finally got serious and pulled out a win."
The moment of clarity, as it were, came at the intermission.
"We realized we were playing like crap at halftime," Spencer said. "(Henri) said, 'You better go out there and make a lead,' so we went out there and got some points on them."
Nike McClure took over in the second half, scoring 15 of her game-high 21 points, and W.F. West pounded the ball inside to McClure and Tiana Parker (8 points) to pull away, going 13 of 25 from the field in the second half.
Tori Weeks added 12 points, on 4 of 7 shooting from long range, for W.F. West, while Spencer and Katie Hankins each added 8 points. Jessica McKay tallied all 7 of her points off the bench in the first half.
The Bearcats (22-2) will now advance to the State 2A Girls Basketball Tournament, in which they finished second — losing to Mark Morris in overtime in the championship game — last season. Their first-round opponent for Thursday will be determined in a draw at the WIAA headquarters in Renton on Sunday.
"We've got some big goals ahead of us," Spencer said. "Now we're finally through this game and we can focus on what's ahead."
