Broncos finish fifth at state

SPOKANE—All good things must come to an end. For the No. 9 Lind-Ritzville/Sprague/Washtucna/Harrington Broncos, the end to a magical postseason run at the 2B Boys State Tournament concluded with a 70-47 loss to the No. 4 Columbia (Burbank) Coyotes in the 3rd/5th place game at the Spokane Arena Saturday, March 4.

Both teams came in fresh off tough semifinal losses the night prior, with Columbia getting trounced by Davenport and LRS losing a heartbreaker to Brewster.

“To lose a close semifinal game and turn around that next morning, I’ve never had a great experience with that,” LRS head coach Dustan Arlt said. “I thought we came out pretty well. Burbank’s a talented team though. They played one less game, which doesn’t work in our favor.”

LRS jumped out to a quick 14-9 lead in the first quarter.

But tired legs began to show for the Broncos in the second quarter, as Columbia flipped the script and outscored LRS by 12 in the period to take a 31-24 lead into halftime.

The Coyotes kept up the pressure in the second half, only growing their lead throughout the game to finish a season in which they only lost two games…both to No. 1 Davenport.

“Second half, we closed it right at the start, but you could tell (playing) four days in a row wore on us a little bit,” Arlt said. “Didn’t have a lot of guys putting the ball in the hoop…and they just kept slowly pulling away.”

Jayce Kelly led LRS with 20 points, while Chase Galbreath had another double-double with 13 points and 14 rebounds.

Columbia had a balanced attack led by Quincy Scott’s 20 points and six rebounds. Tristan Frimodt added 14 points and Crew Pariera had 11 points for the Coyotes.

LRS finished a fifth-place season with two straight losses, but also earned two wins at the Arena and one opening round victory after a strong run through Districts.

“It seems like we’ve been in the playoffs forever, which we have. It’s been a month,” Arlt said. “The kids stuck together. We played our best basketball in this last month, there’s no question about that. To get hardware as a nine seed is a great accomplishment.”