Bulldogs claim regular season league title with victory over Moscow

MOSCOW — Sandpoint girls basketball claimed the 4A Inland Empire League regular season title with a 41-34 win over Moscow on Saturday.

The victory also means the Bulldogs have locked up the No. 1 seed in the regional tournament. If Sandpoint is able to complete a season sweep of the Bears when they host Moscow at 4:30 p.m. next Saturday, the Bulldogs would earn home court advantage throughout the tourney and a team would have to beat them twice at Les Rogers Court to prevent them from advancing to state.

This season has been one to remember for Sandpoint after the Bulldogs finished with a 5-15 record last year. Currently, Sandpoint is 13-6 and remains undefeated in league play.

It’s been an amazing turnaround, but the Bulldogs aren’t satisfied yet.

“The girls have worked really hard to be able to do this,” head coach Will Love said, “and it just makes me really proud of them that they’ve been able to accomplish all the stuff they have so far this season, but we’re not done. Hopefully we have a ways to go.

They can never take away that the 2019-20 4A IEL regular season champions were the Sandpoint Bulldogs.”

Love said all the players have bought into doing whatever it takes to win games and senior leadership has been key to their success this season.

“When you have five seniors that helps out a lot because they’ve experienced the good times and trips to state and they’ve experienced the bad times when we lost twice in a row to Moscow last year to end our season,” he said.

It was a game that started slow for both teams as they struggled to find a rhythm and tried to feel each other out in their first matchup this season.

After the first quarter, Sandpoint led 11-9.

The second quarter is where the Bulldogs won the game as their defense took control. The Bears couldn’t get anything going offensively against Sandpoint’s aggressive defense and when they did find a tiny bit of space, they couldn’t knock down any shots

The Bulldogs outscored Moscow 14-1 in the second quarter to take a commanding 25-10 lead at the half. Moscow turned the ball over 12 times in the first half.

But the Bears didn’t go down without a fight. Moscow knocked down two straight 3-pointers to start the second half to cut into Sandpoint’s lead and force Love to take a timeout just over a minute and 30 seconds into the third quarter.

The Bulldogs struggled offensively and were outscored 14-7 in the quarter. It also didn’t help that junior Hattie Larson got in foul trouble, forcing Love to go to his bench.

But the players Love inserted into the game, particularly sophomore Sophia Platte and senior Brooklen Steiger, stepped up and help Sandpoint keep a comfortable distance between themselves and Moscow.

“I give them a lot of credit because they came in and they lifted the team when we kind of needed it and Moscow was making a run,” Love said.

In the fourth quarter the Bulldogs held off a desperate Bears team despite missing a handful of free throws down the stretch.

Love said his team was a little disappointed after the game because they didn’t play their best in the final 16 minutes of action.

“In the second half, I think [Moscow] made some good adjustments trying to overload and get shooters open on the side and their kids stepped up and made some big shots,” he said.

Larson and junior Bella Phillips led the Bulldogs scoring 9 points each and freshman Kelsey Cessna added 7.

Moscow sophomore guard Ellie Gray had 11 points and seven rebounds.

Sandpoint (13-6, 3-0 IEL) heads to West Valley at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday.

Sandpoint 11 14 7 9 — 41

Moscow 9 1 14 10 — 34

SANDPOINT — Cessna 7, Lish 0, Day. Driggs 0, Morgan 5, Daw. Driggs 5, Edwards 0, Steiger 2, Phillips 9, Larson 9, Platte 0, Banks 4.

MOSCOW — M. Watson 9, Lassen 4, Gray 11, Heyns 0, Claus 2, P. Watson 8, Anderson 0, Craig 0, Baker 0.