It wasn’t a perfect game. Yet Grand Junction fashioned one of its best performances of the year in a 60-39 pounding of Pine Creek in Thursday’s Class 5A, first-round girls basketball playoff game.

“We fought through some flat spots. I told the kids nobody plays basketball perfect for 32 minutes,” said Grand Junction head coach Sam Provenza.

“But when you fight through the flat spots and don’t let the other team get too far away from you, that’s the sign of a good basketball team.”

And the Tigers never allowed the Eagles the opportunity to pull away.

Grand Junction opened the game with a 7-0 run. On defense, the Tigers forced the Eagles to miss their first three field goal attempts in those two minutes.

The closest Pine Creek got to Grand Junction was midway in the first period when a 3-pointer by the Eagles Adrienne Ross cut the Tigers lead to 9-6.

Not a problem.

Using an obvious height advantage, forward Kerschel Claussen and center Emily Stark scored 10 points between them to take a 21-8 lead at the end of the quarter.

Provenza credited the work of guards Krista Dominguez and Fawn Brady to set the table for the Tigers frontline.

“We’ve been trying to (go inside) for 22 games now,” Provenza said. “It really comes down to what our guards do, and I thought our guards were really prepared and committed to get the ball inside.”

Claussen and Stark reaped the benefits of the guard’s work by scoring 33 points between them. Junior backup forward Lisa Hughes also got involved in the offense with nine points in limited play.

Stark and Claussen each had brilliant defensive games as well. Both players had nine rebounds each. Stark blocked seven Pine Creek shots. Claussen managed to swat away three Eagle field goal tries.

The Tigers’ offense slowed in the second quarter. Pine Creak outscored Grand Junction 9-8 in the frame.

Determined to put the game out of reach, Grand Junction peeled off a 10-0 run after both teams exchanged points. The spree raised the Tigers 12-point lead to an unscalable 41-19 advantage.

“That really did put the game away,” Provenza said.

“That was all from the kids,” the coach added. “You could see the look in their eyes that they were disappointed they didn’t play as well as they could in the first half. You could look in their faces and their eyes they were ready to go out there and take the game over and that’s what they did.”

Provenza hopes for a similar effort Saturday when the Tigers travel to Denver to play
the Sharon Welsh region’s No. 2 seed Horizon.

“This late in the season we don’t tweak much,” Provenza said. “That gets them thinking too much. Tonight, we weren’t thinking. We were just playing.”

In another 5A girls playoff game involving a local team, Columbine ended Fruita Monument’s season by defeating the Wildcats 63-33. No other information on the game was available at press time.