Lady Broncos earn first-round bye in conference tournament

The Lind-Ritzville/Sprague Lady Broncos basketball team ended the regular season on a high note last weekend, and in doing so clinched the South’s No. 2 seed and a first-round bye in the Northeast 2B Conference Tournament that began earlier this week.

The Lady Broncos took on the Reardan Indians in Reardan on Feb. 1 in their regular season finale, and continued to play suffocating defense en route to winning 42-31. Sophomore Linnea Schafer scored a game-high 22 points, which was also a personal season-high for herself. Junior Eliza Galbreath added 10 points, and freshman Dakota Killian chipped in nine points. Only one other Lady Bronco scored in the game.

“I thought defensively we played really well” said head coach Steve Wellsandt. “Linnea maybe had the best game of her high school career, and as a team it was our best shooting percentage of the year. We didn’t take a lot of shots, but we made what we took.”

It wasn’t all good news out of Reardan, though, as sophomore Julia Klein suffered a wrist injury and will be out indefinitely moving forward. Wellsandt said Klein had perhaps been the team’s most consistent rebounder and defender this season, and that they’ll have to manage with a seven-person rotation moving forward in the playoffs.

LRS finished league play with a 7-3 record (10-10 record overall) with the win, which put them in a tie for second place with the Colfax Bulldogs in the league standings. But due to sweeping the season series against the Bulldogs, the Lady Broncos owned the tiebreaker over Colfax and was awarded the South’s No. 2 seed in the conference tournament.

With the first-round bye, the Lady Broncos don’t play their first game of the tournament until Feb. 7 at 5 p.m at West Valley High School—however, that time may be altered if conflicts in the schedule arise. LRS will take on the St. George’s Dragons, the North’s No. 3 seed who beat the Tekoa-Rosalia Timberwolves—the South’s No. 6 seed—in first-round action on Feb. 5.

Wellsandt was in Spokane Tuesday night to watch the St. George’s game against Tekoa-Rosalia in order to get a better sense of how his squad matches up with the Dragons. Wellsandt said the team has three really solid players.

“We expect a real battle with St. George’s,” said Wellsandt. “From what I’ve seen they play a zone defense a lot, so that’s a little different from what we’ve seen lately, which has been a lot of man-to-man defense.”

With Klein’s injury, Wellsandt said they’re going to have to figure out their rotations and how they’re going to play defensively, because her injury really affects those two aspects of their team.

“We’re looking forward to it, and we’ll just see what happens,” said Wellsandt. “There’s no doubt we can beat [St. George’s], we just have to play well to do it. It’ll be a really good matchup.”

A win against the Dragons on Thursday would put the Lady Broncos in the semifinals, which would be played on Feb. 12 at 6:30 p.m. at West Valley. If LRS were to lose to St. George’s, they would fall into the loser’s bracket, where one more loss would end their season.

In that scenario the Lady Broncos would play next against the Asotin Panthers on Feb. 9 at 3:30 p.m. at West Valley. LRS went 2-0 against Asotin in the regular season, and neither game was close. The Lady Broncos beat the Panthers 56-27 in Asotin on Jan. 12, and 52-19 at home on Jan. 26.