(West Seattle’s #21, Gabby Sarver, with 10 points on the night)

For WSB: photos by Patrick Sand, text by Tracy Record

All the local high-school basketball action Friday night was on the road – topped by the marquee game, West Seattle High School‘s girls-varsity faceoff at Holy Names Academy on Capitol Hill, two division-leading teams with big win streaks going as the game began. When it was over, the Wildcats’ streak had been snapped with a 63-48 loss – but that final score didn’t reflect the intensity of the second half, as WSHS went on a comeback tear before falling back.

The Wildcats’ #10 Charli Elliott (photo above), second-leading WSHS scorer of the night with 13 points, got two of them in the first basket of the game. Then the Cougars went on a 10-point run before WSHS managed to score again – with Elliott sinking a foul shot – and they were up 18-5 at the end of the first quarter. WSHS managed to wrangle themselves plenty of shots, but didn’t convert enough of them to keep pace until late in the second quarter, and they went into halftime down 34-18.

“Whole new half!” shouted a member of the spirited Wildcats’ cheering section as the second half tipped off, and once again, Elliott was the first to score, with a basket shortly after the half began.

#30 Lexi Iaone was next (photo above), then #12 Lydia Giomi (photo below), then Iaone with a three-pointer – she was the night’s top Wildcats scorer, with 17.

The Cougars – now 13-1 on the season – didn’t let up, and while WSHS (9-4) kept fighting, they weren’t making much progress closing the gap, and Holy Names started to slow it down around the start of the fourth quarter. That was when the Wildcats launched a comeback run. Sarver was fouled and made both shots, and suddenly they were down by 10, 47-37 – then five more unanswered points, and it was 47-42 with four and a half minutes to go in the game – and when Iaone hit another three-pointer shortly afterward, WSHS was down just two points, 47-45.

(Sarver foreground, #22 Annalisa Ursino background)
But the comeback stopped there, with Names going on an eight-point run including foul shots and a three-pointer, and they were back up 55-45 with a minute and a half left in the game. Though the Wildcats kept trying, they couldn’t regain the momentum, and the final score was 63-48 (here are the stats via The Seattle Times [WSB partner]). They hit the road for a trip to Bainbridge today – JV girls at 3:15, varsity girls at 6:15.

OTHER GAMES: The WSHS boys are headed to Bainbridge tonight too (JV at 4:45 pm, varsity at 8); varsity lost at O’Dea Friday night, 74-61; Chief Sealth‘s boys varsity lost at Bishop Blanchet, 72-53, as did the Sealth girls-varsity team, 63-21.