AIA 4A girls playoffs Flagstaff shows some rust in win over Walden Grove

FLAGSTAFF – The Flagstaff girls basketball team had to shake off some rust on Thursday night.

The third-seeded Lady Eagles (17-4) gradually pulled away from No. 14 Walden Grove (10-10) with a 58-38 win in the opening round of the Arizona Interscholastic Association 4A Girls State Championship bracket. In the next round, Flagstaff will host region rival Prescott at 6 p.m. on Saturday.

The Eagles were coming off a 71-67 loss to Raymond S. Kellis in the Open Division Bracket as that contest was played nine days earlier on Feb. 18.

“We’ve been pushing them pretty hard it terms of extra conditioning,” Flagstaff coach Tyrone Johnson said. “We didn’t work on execution stuff like X’s and O’s as we could have. We just wanted to work on conditioning, so I think it showed tonight to where we weren’t executing at a high level.”

Flagstaff junior guard Carter Edison agreed.

“Tonight was kind of not our night,” Edison said. “We missed a lot of shots, you know, but I felt like we stepped up on defense. We were getting a lot of steals and going up, but we just couldn’t make our shots.”

Despite its shooting woes, Flagstaff never trailed in this contest as 11 of 15 players played a part in the 20-point win. Senior guard Teagan Martin led Flagstaff with 13 points while Lexi Neal and Edison added seven a piece.

“We’re very unselfish,” Edison said. “We like to pass the ball around, but when we get our chances, we like to shoot.”

The Flagstaff coach likes that they’re sharing the ball, but at times it leads to negative consequences.

“Sometimes we get too unselfish,” Johnson said. “Sometimes we pass up opportunities, you know, that’s a good look for us. And then we make extra passes, which is great, but then we ended up turning the ball over, so we got to be able to know when to make those extra passes and when to take our shots.”

In Thursday’s contest, the Eagles closed out the opening quarter on a 9-4 run to break a 4-all tie. Senior Lacey Walker, who scored four points, hit a pair of buckets that helped Flagstaff to a 13-8 advantage heading into the second.

An early 3-pointer from Edison pushed the Eagles lead to eight points, but after that bucket at the 7:49 mark, points were hard to come by.

And although Flagstaff turned over the visiting Red Wolves into six turnovers, the Johnson-coached team could not extend its lead.

Walden Grove got within 16-10 with 3:32 left following a pair of free throws from senior guard Marisa Bryson, who finished with a team-best 10 points.

The Eagles finally got going when freshman Orianna Tsosie scored five straight as her transition layup earned Flag a 21-10 cushion with 2:12 left before the break.

That momentum carried over into the third with the Eagles opening up a 29-13 cushion with 5:36 left after an inside bucket from Martin.

Behind Bryson, Walden Grove made one final push as she scored five straight to get the Red Wolves within 29-18 with just over five minutes left. Unfortunately, that was as close as the visitors would get as Flag finished out the period on a 9-2 run, which included a pair of old-fashioned 3-point plays from Martin, who scored nine of her 13-point total.

In the final stanza, Flag outscored the Red Wolves 20 to 16 with seven different players scoring. Sophomore Nidaya Nez and Neal combined for 11 points with Neal scoring seven.

That balanced scoring, Johnson said, is very typical of his team.

“When you look at our averages across the board, we probably got lower averages than a lot of team just because so many people contribute,” the Flag coach said. “You’ll have teams like Prescott that their two main scorers probably average 19 and 17 points per game. And our top players, I think are averaging 12 and nine, but we get a lot of scoring across the board.”

As for its upcoming showdown with Prescott, Johnson expects the Badgers to lean on junior guards Bella Abt and Addie Prisciandaro in Saturday’s game.

“They really score for them on the offensive end,” Johnson said of the Prescott duo. “They’re playmakers that make them go, but if you focus too heavily on them, they have role players that are capable of stepping up and having a big night, so we want to play them with our normal man defense and pressure them.

“We’ll see what happens, but if need to adjust, we’ll adjust as the game goes,” he added.

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