Wolves suffer Royals stunner at home

For all the success that has come to the South Kitsap High School boys basketball team this season, SK coach John Callaghan said his team exposed its weakness in its 70-55 loss at home to Kent-Meridian Thursday night in the first round of the West Central District Tournament.

“The one thing that has haunted us all year is our patience,” Callaghan said. “When we went up (15 points) in the first quarter that was probably the worst thing that could happen because we probably thought we were going to run away with it.”

Instead, Kent-Meridian, the No. 7 seed from the South Puget Sound League, chipped away at the lead and eventually evened the score midway through the third quarter.

The teams played to a tie into the fourth quarter before SK went on a 7-0 run to take a 48-41 lead.

Everything fell apart for the Wolves from that point.

The Royals mounted a full-court pressure that SK failed to break.

At one point, the Royals converted five straight SK turnovers into buckets to take a 61-51 lead with two minutes to play.

Unlike the Mount Tahoma game, in which SK came back from eight points to force overtime and eventually win — the Wolves had no answers on this night and fell to 20-2 overall.

SK battles the Enumclaw Hornets (14-7) — who lost to Lincoln in the first round — tonight at 8 p.m. at Rogers High School in Puyallup in a loser-out game.

This is familiar territory for SK.

The Wolves lost their first-round game to Battle Ground last year before stringing together three straight wins to earn the WCD No. 5 seed into the state tournament.

Callaghan said that’s obviously what the Wolves need to do again.

SK needs to win its next two games just to stay alive.

It could lose its third game and come back and win the fourth game for the seventh and final state berth.

Right now, SK’s chief concern is defeating a young but talented Enumclaw team.

Callaghan said he expects his team to rebound from the loss to Kent-Meridian.

“Life is full of setbacks, and this is a great learning opportunity for us,” he said. “We’ll find out what we’re made of. You get knocked down, you gotta get back up, and they will. We will play well on Satur-day.”

In girls’ action, the South Kitsap Wolves lost to state-ranked Kentlake 72-40 Wednesday night in the first round of the WCD tournament.

SK played Kentridge last night in a loser-out game at Foss High School in Tacoma. The results were unavailable at press time.

SK came out sluggish against Kentlake and scored just two points in the first quarter compared to Kentlake’s 16 points.

Senior Kristi Utter led SK with 11 points, Jamae Feddock added nine points, and Loni Tostenrude had six points.

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