Warriors begin Regionals

Both Washington basketball teams finally begin State playoff action tonight, starting with the girls at 6 p.m. against Chandler.

The boys follow immediately after and will also play Chandler.

Neither team played in the District tournament last week after the girls team received a bye and Dove Science Academy forfeited to the Warrior boys.

Girls

The Chandler girls are 10-13 this season and defeated Beggs in the District tournament.

Washington girls head coach Kale Simon said his team will have to take care of business against the Chandler zone defense.

“They run a 2-3 zone that could be trouble if we don’t do our stuff,” he said.

Offensively, the Warriors will have to keep track of a couple of Lions who are good shooters.

The Washington girls took their lone loss of the season last Tuesday, falling to Classen SAS 41-39.

Classen SAS is ranked No. 12 in Class 4A.

“We didn’t do the things we needed to do to win,” Simon said. “We had chances to win but down the stretch we didn’t control the controllables to win the basketball game.”

Preslee Johnson led the team in scoring with 15 points.

Rielyn Scheffe had 12 in the game.

Despite the loss, the coach likes where his team is right now.

“I think we’re right where we need to be both mentally and physically,” he said. “We’ll grow from the loss and we’ll use the mentality that we approach every day with as a weapon.”

The Warriors are 22-1.

Boys

The Washington boys also play Chandler to open the Regional tournament.

The Lions, who are 13-10 this season, sport a towering front line with multiple players over six feet tall.

“Chandler is really big,” said head coach Trevor Smith. “Their center is 6’6” and they have kids who are 6’5” and 6’3”. Their guards can shoot it too.”

The signature win for Chandler this season was a 66-58 win over Class 4A No. 14 McLoud.

“They beat a good McLoud team earlier this year,” Smith said.

Chandler will try to slow the pace of play down and feed the ball inside to the big center.

With the extra time off the Warriors had a chance to prepare for tonight’s game.

“I think we’re pretty prepared and we just have to go execute,” Smith said.

The Warriors picked up a 64-50 over Classen SAS last Tuesday.

“We played really well and it was probably our best offensive game of the year,” Smith said. “We had good ball movement in the game.”

Hayden Hicks led the way for the Warriors with 21 points, followed by Mason Adams with 18.

Hicks hit four three pointers in the second quarter as Washington outscored Classen 26-9 in the quarter.

“We beat them down in the second and third quarters,” Smith said. “A lot of it was attributed to our defense. We guarded really well and got out to some easy buckets.”

The Warriors are 15-8 this season.