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By PAUL DELANEY
Staff Reporter 

Cardinal girls complete perfect league season

Open playoffs as No. 1 Northeast A League seed Friday at West Valley

 

Last updated 2/10/2017 at 11:33am

Paul Delaney

Medical Lake's Jayda Noble turns a defender around as she heads to the basket against Colville.

See a photo gallery from the event here.

The furthest thing from Medical Lake girls' basketball head coach Kyle Lundberg's mind is the feat his team just accomplished last Thursday night.

That was going a perfect 14-0 to win the school's first Northeast A League regular season championship in more than a generation.

The Cardinals, 18-2 overall, who clinched the title on Jan. 27 with a win over Freeman, completed the final leg of the journey with a pair of wins, 50-47 at Lakeside, Jan. 31, and then capped perfection in a 60-43 victory over Colville on senior night, Feb. 2.

"Honestly I haven't really thought about the league title for about a week now, we are focusing on districts and our first game on Friday," Lundberg said. "During postseason, all the records are reset to 0-0, so we have to continue to play the way I know we are capable of playing to keep this great season going."

In that next outing the top-seeded and the state's No. 11 RPI ranked Cards face either No. 4 seed Deer Park (9-11) or No. 5 Colville (6-14) Friday, Feb. 10 at 6:30 p.m. at West Valley in Spokane.

The freshman duo of Jayda Noble and Lexi Redell - who scored 13 and 12 points respectively - once again led Medical Lake in their season finale where the Cardinals put up 22 points in the third quarter to put the game away.

Lundberg addressed an unusual defensive downfall where, after being held to just seven points in the opening quarter, the Indians poured in 16 and Colville trailed just 27-23 at halftime.

"We had some lapses where we didn't play good defense," he said. "We left a few of their shooters too open and they hit some big shots. Colville is a good offensive team and we learned we can't take breaks on defense."

What did not show up in the stats? "Our ball pressure was pretty good and we got some turnovers that we were able to get easy baskets," Lundberg said.

Their game at Lakeside (13-7) also showed some cracks in their season-long ability to stop their opponents. Particularly troubling to Lundberg was the Eagles' 22-7 run in the fourth quarter that left a potential breeze of a win in doubt.

"We took our foot off the pedal and put it on cruise control," Lundberg said of the final eight minutes. "Our energy level wasn't up to their level in the last three minutes of that game.

Lakeside hit a few big shots and Medical Lake seemed to be just going through the motions, Lundberg observed. "(We) almost let it slip away, it was a great learning opportunity for our team, that we must keep our energy level up and stay aggressive," he said.

Redell led all scorers in the game with 13 points with Noble and senior Michaela Peterson each adding 10.

"She had a great game, we were able to drive and when her defender came to help we made some great passes to her and she was able to finish," Lundberg said of Peterson whose career is quickly winding down.

Looking to Friday - and beyond - Lundberg said his team has locked on to an attitude he hopes will carry them deep into the postseason.

"We talk about staying hungry, and not being satisfied," he said. "Teams are going to be ready for us and we need to be aggressive and continue to play our style of basketball. We now have the target on our back and teams will be gunning for us."

Paul Delaney can be reached at pdelaney@cheneyfreepress.com.

See a photo gallery from the event here.

 

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