Bend High places 5th to match program’s best finish

Published 7:10 am Saturday, March 11, 2017

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CORVALLIS — Todd Ervin speculated that Corvallis was still fuming about its semifinal loss the night before — a triple-overtime setback against Silverton.

So, the Bend High coached suggested, the No. 2-seeded Spartans came out Friday and took out their frustrations on the No. 5 Lava Bears in the third-place game of the Class 5A girls basketball state tournament at Gill Coliseum.

The final score was 53-33, but it was not really that close.

The outburst began on Corvallis’ second possession, as Alexandria Vallancy-Martinson hit a layup to spark a 15-0 run to open the contest. Bend, meanwhile, missed its first three shots and committed eight turnovers.

“It was defensive pressure,” Ervin said. “We couldn’t even get into anything we wanted to run in the first quarter, and they were hitting every shot that they had. It was a pretty rough start, but I was proud with how the kids kept fighting.”

The Spartans started the second quarter in similar fashion. As Bend went scoreless during the first six minutes of the period, Corvallis (23-4) strung together 12 straight points, including Grace Corbin’s jumper that extended the Spartans’ lead to 32-5. Bend trailed 36-8 at the half, shooting just 2-for-15 from the field while committing 16 turnovers that led to 21 Corvallis points.

Corbin’s layup midway through the third earned Corvallis its largest lead of the game, 45-11. Kylee Roath scored six points as Bend (20-6) followed with a 16-2 run that made the score more respectable at 47-27 in the fourth quarter.

The gap, however, was too wide for Bend to overcome as the Bears — who opened the tourney with an upset quarterfinal win over No. 4 Marist before falling to No. 1 La Salle in a Thursday semifinal — settled for fifth place and the program’s third-ever state trophy.

Corbin finished with 18 points to go with seven boards to pace Corvallis.

Roath had 10 points and two assists to lead Bend, which shot just 26.3 percent from the field. Cambree Scott posted eight points and eight rebounds for the Lava Bears to finish the tournament with an average of eight points and nearly 10 boards per game.

“She was amazing,” Ervin said of Scott. “I don’t know where we’d be. … We would have just really been ugly without her. She was great.”

Though Bend ended the season with a lopsided loss, Ervin focused on the accomplishments of these Lava Bears, who won Bend’s fifth Intermountain Conference championship in six years and made the state semifinal round for just the second time in program history.

“After getting crushed by Marist early in the year, to come here and win (against Marist) was definitely the next step,” Ervin said. “We’re not quite there to compete with No. 1 and No. 2 in the state, for sure, but, gosh, it was definitely a step. I was just thrilled at how hard they played and competed against a really good La Salle team and even today, other than the start, I was pleased.”

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