Prep Girls Basketball Roundup: Scores and Reports from The Blast Zone

Playing Catch Up — Scattershot results for area teams as winter break beckons

A basketball sits on the baseline of a local court waiting to be bounced. — Skyler Smith for Blast Zone Media

Jordan Nailon / blastzonenews@gmail.com

Mark Morris defense sets the tone against Kelso

The Mark Morris and Kelso girls basketball teams come together to chat prior to the start of the second half at Ted M. Natt Court, Friday. The Monarchs went on to win 47-41. — Jordan Nailon / Blast Zone Media

The Longview School District could have built a brand new gymnasium in honor of Bill Bakamus with all of the bricks that were laid Friday evening when the Mark Morris girls basketball team hosted Kelso as the opening act on Bill Bakamus Night.

With the former Mark Morris boys basketball coach in attendance and set to have the gymnasium renamed in his honor at the conclusion of the girls game, both teams had a difficult time scoring the ball at times, but it was Kelso that wound up on the short end of a 47-41 decision in the non-league cross-river rivalry contest.

“We didn’t quit, which I love. But we didn’t score until like a minute and something to go in the first quarter and it was the same thing in the second half,” Kelso coach Andrew Johnson said. “Their defense was good tonight and our offense wasn’t.”

Those offensive struggles were not limited to the Hilanders, though, as both teams struggled to rip the net. Mark Morris had a slightly better night shooting the basketball but still made just 20 percent from the field while knocking down just nine field goals on the evening.

By halftime the score was just 18-13 in favor of the Monarchs, and even after the visitors went scoreless for the first five and a half minutes of the second half the hosts had failed to pull away.