Despite having just seven players active Wednesday for a game against district foe Columbia River, the Hudson’s Bay girls basketball team embraced the challenge.
In fact, the short-handed Eagles played energized throughout an eventual 49-44 win on the Rapids’ home floor at J. Hoover Gymnasium to improve to 4-2 in the 2A Greater St. Helens League while handing River (6-1) their first league loss.
While Bay’s second leading scorer, senior Miranda Gonzalez, was sidelined for the game and instead helped the team from the bench, the rest of the Eagles’ starting five stepped up to fill the scoring void.
Seniors Alana Stephens and Promise Bond paced Bay with 15 and 13 points, respectively, while freshmen Avi Desjarlais and Olivia Carroll each scored 12 points.
“For the team it was really important, especially since last year I feel like teams have been counting us out and expecting that we’re not going to show up,” Bond said. “Especially today, things didn’t work out how we thought they were going to. Our other senior Miranda was out today, so it kind of threw something (different) in for us. We really worked together as a team and got that win.”
“I think we kept our energy, which helped us,” Stephens said. “Sometimes we go back and forth (with) energy, but I think this time we had our energy up the whole game and we didn’t let back.”
Bay maintained that activity level even though four of its five starters stayed on the floor for the entirety of the back-and-forth, 32-minute game.
River held a one-point lead entering the fourth quarter, before a Carroll 3-pointer broke a 34-all tie to give the Eagles the lead. Desjarlais later scored on a pair of offensive rebounds and putbacks to give the Eagles their largest lead, 43-36.
The Rapids got within one point on a Marley Myers layup inside the final two minutes, before Stephens countered with a basket on the other end.
Bay outscored River 15-12 in the final quarter and clamped down on the Rapids’ sharp-shooting that yielded eight 3-pointers in the first three quarters led by Gracie Glavin (16 points) and Peyton Dukes (nine points).
“Defense is our big thing this year,” Bond said. “I think that is one thing we want to be our takeaway from every game, is that we played the hardest defense that we could. We don’t want to leave any game with regrets. We’re just going to leave it all out there.”
As a result of the holiday break, Bay hadn’t played since a Dec. 20 loss to Ridgefield (9-0, 6-0 2A GSHL), the current league leader. The Eagles suffered a close 41-37 loss to the Spudders, and had two weeks to think about it before returning to action Wednesday against River.
“Coming off a game like that, it was kind of like, we knew we had to play another team hard again,” Stephens said. “We knew we had to come out with some fire and not (let) them think that, because we lost, we’re not going to be going at them. We were going to go at them 100 percent.”
Just two games separate the top four teams in the 2A GSHL: Ridgefield, River, Bay and Mark Morris. Ridgefield and River will face off on Friday, while Bay travels to face Woodland on the road.
