Goats will play a loser-out game Friday morning
by Dennis Rahm; team photo courtesy of Daniela Espinoza
After a tight first half against the number one ranked team at State, poor shooting in the second half allowed the Zillah Leopards to pull away from Chelan with a final score of 68-53 in the quarter-finals of the Boys 1-A State Basketball Tournament.
The Goats were led in scoring by Luca Faletto with 24-points. Tev Uttech was close behind with 21-points.
Chelan trailed by only 3 at the half, but poor free-throw shooting coupled with long-range shooting woes gave Zillah the opportunity to extend their lead.
For the game, Chelan shot only 37% from the free-throw line on 10 of 27; 3-point shooting was even worse as the Goats finished the contest 3 of 18 for 16.7%. Any opportunity to come back from behind was squashed by second half shooting from distance where Chelan came up empty in 8 attempts. The Goats played hard against a very talented team, but could not overcome the poor second half shooting.
Chelan still has an opportunity to advance to the trophy round on Saturday if they can win Friday morning against Annie Wright in a loser-out game. Earlier today, Annie Wright lost their match against #3 Royal by a score of 63-37.
#7-ranked Chelan and #5-ranked Annie Wright will tip off at 9:00 a.m. on Friday at the Yakima SunDome. The winner will play for 4th or 6th place on Saturday. The loser goes home.
