TUMWATER — The Tumwater girls basketball team has won its fair share of games in recent years by pressing opponents out of whack and turning things into a track meet. Monday evening, though, the Thunderbirds got a taste of their own medicine in a 60-33 loss to 3A Timberline that got out of hand in a hurry and never got back under control.
“They did a really good job of pressuring us,” Tumwater coach Nathan Buchheit said. “When the doubles started coming at us, we just didn’t do a good job of handling it. We didn’t do a good job of cutting to the basketball to help relieve the ball handler. Kudos to them, they played really tough defense and we just didn’t handle it well.”
The Blazers went on a 21-4 run in the second quarter, with 10 of those points coming in transition. Then in the third quarter, they turned a 12-point lead into a 24-point gap in a matter of three minutes, once again getting out ahead of the Tumwater defense and keeping the Thunderbirds (6-1, 4-0 2A EvCo) out of any sort of rhythm offensively.
Tumwater was able to match the pace for much of the first quarter, but just couldn’t sustain it. After the T-Birds went up 13-9 on a Rhylee Beebe 3-pointer five minutes into the game, they managed just eight more field goals the rest of the way.
As a team, Tumwater turned the ball over 20 times.
“We’ve got to be able to move without the ball and have a higher IQ of knowing when your girl leaves you to be the one that’s initiating, and being confident in yourself to be assertive to go get the ball and make a play,” Buchheit said.
Beebe led the hosts with seven points, all of which came in the first quarter. Elsa Schreck, Regan Brewer and Makenzie Kolb all added six points apiece.
Brewer logged six steals, while Sydney Sumrok led the way on the glass with six rebounds.
It’s the T-Birds’ second low-scoring game in a row — coming off a 25-23 win over Montesano — after they reached at least 50 points in all of their first four games.
“I think this is a definite wake-up call before Christmas,” Buccheit said. “We’ve got a tough stretch of games coming up, too. These are the types of games you want to play, though. You don’t want to be beating teams by 20, 30, 40 points all the time. You want to be able to see what you are like against other good teams.
“Unfortunately we were on the other end of it tonight, of getting a big loss. The good thing is that tomorrow’s a new day, and we’re going to attack the process.”
That tough stretch will continue with three road games before New Year’s, the latter two of which came against teams who went to their respective state tournaments last year. First, though, the Thunderbirds will head to Bothell, where they’ll take on Cedar Park Christian on Thursday.
