UPDATE: With the Bainbridge girls basketball team trailing Liberty by five points

with seven minutes remaining to play, Fab Rezayat ignited a scoring explosion

that accounted for 26 points as the Spartans defeated the Patriots 60-51 on

Tuesday afternoon. Rezayat scored 13 of her team-high 17 points in that span,

including six of six from the foul line in the final minute. Natalie Berry

added 12 and Alice Russell had 10.

The Spartans face second-ranked Rainier Beach on Saturday at 3 p.m. at Bellevue

Community College.

Full details of Tuesday’s game will appear in Saturday’s Review.

—–

Facing a 6-foot-6 opponent in Eastside Catholic’s Sarah McKay, the BHS girls’ basketball played right into her hands.

Literally.

The junior transfer from Victoria, B.C. swatted away nine Spartan shots – several times blocking the ball with one hand and then controlling it with the other – and altered the trajectories of at least a dozen more.

The Crusaders easily put away the Spartans 58-32 on Saturday in the Metro Tournament. Had McKay put in several easy short-range shots – she still finished with a game-high 13 points – the score would have been worse.

“I don’t know if she’s really that good,” coach Penny Gienger said. “Our game plan was to go at her and make her move. But instead we just turned around and shot right into her arm.

“I just want to forget about it. We were just a bad team on Saturday. I don’t think that we did anything we’re capable of doing. We didn’t have any pop and played real flat.”

The practical effect of the loss, however, is that it may actually have been to the Spartans’ benefit, putting them in a better bracket for state tournament play.

While the Crusaders became the No. 5 seed Metro seed and Bainbridge wound up as the No. 6 seed, the Spartans would face Rainier Beach rather than Seattle Prep if they won yesterday afternoon’s first-round District 2 Tournament game against Liberty. The 10-11 Patriots earned the Kingco third seed by knocking off Skyline (13-8) 53-48 on Saturday.

The mental effect may have been something else.

“The girls went from such a high (beating Lakeside on Wednesday) to such a low,” Gienger said. “I just don’t know how they will react (on Tuesday).”

After Christine Schwager sank a pair of free throws to tie the game at 4-4 just over two minutes into the game, the Spartans played perhaps their worst six minutes of basketball of the season. The Crusaders went on an 18-0 run to take a 22-4 first quarter lead.

The Spartans had six turnovers and numerous airballs. Things were no better on the defensive end as the Crusaders scored almost at will on layins, uncontested pull-up jumpers in the lane, putbacks of missed shots and even a trey.

Bainbridge scored the first three points of the second quarter to close to within 22-7, but they would get no closer the rest of the way as Crusaders led at the half 32-11.

The Spartans needed nearly half the third period to even draw iron on a field goal attempt as McKay had five rejections and the Spartans had just a single two-pointer as the margin expanded to 42-17.

Bainbridge had 15 final-quarter points, sinking nine free throws, to make the final score marginally more respectable.

The team shot eight of 32 from two-point range and a horrific 0-for-15 from three-point range – 17 percent overall. The terrible shooting also meant a season-low five assists.

Tiana Gallagher led the team with six points. Courtney Kimball and Natalie Berry both had five, Alice Russell and Fab Rezayat had four, Schwager had three, Haley Wiggins and Morgan Zajonc added two, while Lee Maloney had one. Wiggins had the one team’s one good line with two blocked shots, three steals, two rebounds and an assist.

Gienger was cautiously optimistic heading into the Liberty game.

“We’re 0-0 in districts,” she said. “You never know what will happen.”