A potential four-game losing streak was stopped short Friday, as the Bainbridge High varsity girls basketball team managed a 47-38 win against the visitors from Roosevelt (6-8 overall) Friday, Jan. 12.
It was the team’s first win of the year new — their first since a Dec. 28 victory over Kingston — and bumped their overall season record to 7-7 (4-5 in conference).
Bainbridge boasts the third-place spot in the Metro standings, behind Seattle Prep (first) and Bishop Blanchet (second).
“It was a great win for us, for sure,” Spartan Head Coach Henry Guterson.
“On defense, the whole game was just wonderful. In terms of doing everything we talked about in practice and in terms of our scouting report on [Roosevelt], they executed really well — and not just the first quarter or second, but the whole game.”
The Spartan coach said Roosevelt is known for having several dominant players in key positions, and the island squad worked hard from the first minutes of play to deal with them.
“They have a very dominant post player and a very dominant guard,” he said. “We really tried to focus on those two players and if they were going to beat us we wanted them to beat us with other players.”
The Spartans were on the board first Friday, leading 2-0 after only a minute or so of play in the game’s initial quarter. They maintained that quickly gotten lead, and were still ahead 16-9 at the end of the first.
The Rough Riders made small gains, but the Spartan squad was keeping pace and staying out front for the second, which ended with the island team up 34-15.
In the third quarter, fans saw more of the same as the Spartans refused to lose, kept the visitors at bay and made gains sufficient to begin the final quarter up 39-28.
They remained comfortably in the lead through the final buzzer.
“It was wonderful,” Guterson said. “The focus they had, and the attention to detail they had on defense was excellent.”
The win left the Spartans in a very good place, the coach said, as they near the start of the postseason. Just six games remain on the regular season schedule, and only one more home game.
“We’re in a great position,” he said. “Tonight was certainly huge in terms of where we’re going to place in the standings.”
The goal, of course, is to earn home game in the first round of the postseason, and the most manageable path forward possible, the coach said.
The Spartans went on from Friday’s win to begin a four-game series on the road. They will next play at home again at 7 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 31, against Ingraham.
