Warriors win inaugural basketball tournament

The Washington girls basketball team won the Washington basketball tournament after defeating Tecumseh 60-34 on Saturday.

It’s the third tournament the Warriors (17-0) have won this season.

The Class 3A No. 1 Warriors also picked up wins against Cache (46-22) and Blanchard (51-28) in the tourney.

In the finals against 4A No. 15 Tecumseh, head coach Kale Simon thought his team did a good job attacking the Savage’s zone defense.

“We came out early on with super precise passing against the zone. We had great ball movement,” he said. “We were shooting well too.”

Preslee Johnson heated up for 19 points to lead all scorers.

Rielyn Scheffe was feeling it also and poured in 17 points.

Breanna Lindert was also in double figures with 13 points.

Defensively, the coach said Kelby Beller did a good job working against Tecumseh’s best player while the whole team had great help in gaps.

Cache

In the Cache win, Lindert had a game-high 15 points, followed by Johnson with 12 and Scheffe with 11.

Washington got out to a quick 13-4 lead after the first quarter, then extended it to a 26-8 lead by halftime and never let the Bulldogs come up for air.

Blanchard

Washington got another 18 points from Scheffe in the Blanchard win on Friday.

Lindert had 12 in the game as well.

“We shot the ball well in several of our games last week,” Simon said.

The Tecumseh win was especially rewarding for Simon and the Warriors.

“Tecumseh beat us by 21 this summer,” he said. “Our work day in and day out has put us in this position. Our consistency of doing the work every day has put us in this position and I hope our team sees that. But it’s harder to stay at the top than it is to make the climb.”

Overall Simon was pleased not only with his team’s play, but also the tournament itself.

“It was a really good tournament and Andy Newby did a really good job,” he said.

Boys

The Washington boys took third place in the tournament with wins against Chickasha (64-43) and Cache (62-52) bookending a 56-50 loss to Blanchard.

Head coach Trevor Smith said he wasn’t exactly pleased with his team during the Chickasha win.

“We didn’t play very well but still won by 20,” he said. “We were just kind of going through the motions.”

Smith’s bench filled in the minutes in the third quarter before the starters finished the game off.

“The second team did their jobs,” Smith said.

Blanchard

The Warriors ran into a good Blanchard team in the next round but had their chances to pull out the win.

“They’re really good and played a wide zone against us,” Smith said. “It was the first time we’ve been zoned all year. Once we adjusted to it we cut the lead to two points.”

Cache

The Warriors were without senior Hayden Hicks for the Cache game and were looking for someone to step in to fill his scoring role.

Enter stage left Mason Adams.

The sophomore dumped in 26 points for the Warriors, including 4-6 from behind the arc.

“We knew he could do it and it was encouraging to see him do it in a game,” Smith said. “It was next-man-up basketball.”

Senior Jaden Cornelius scored 10 points in the game to get into double figures as well.

The Warriors, now 10-7, are looking to get healthy as they enter the back stretch of their season.

“It’s been a brutal schedule the last three weeks but we’re competing, we’re in all these games and we’ve had a chance to win all these games.”