Eastlake girls rebound from tough loss, down Woodinville

It wasn’t necessarily a work of art, but the Eastlake girls basketball team happily accepted the result of Monday night’s home matchup with KingCo 4A foe Woodinville.

“It was just not pretty,” Eastlake coach Scott Sartorious said. “I don’t have a perfect word to sum it up.”

The Wolves defeated the Falcons, 50-40 — all without making a single free throw.

“I’ve never heard of that before,” Sartorious said of his team’s ability to win, despite going 0-for-4 from the free throw line. “That sums it up right there.”

The Wolves never trailed Monday, but the Falcons closed a double-digit gap late in the third quarter. Woodinville’s Melissa Gilkey, who had a game-high 18 points, brought the Falcons to within their closest margin of four points, 32-28, converting a three-point play with 2:30 to go in the third.

Eastlake answered with buckets from Jessica Kelly and Kelly Montgomery, before Alyssa Charlston took over the fourth quarter.

The 6-foot junior scored eight of her 12 points in the final 6:30.

“I knew in that fourth quarter I was going to have to try and help create more shots,” Charlston said. “I was missing, but I decided I needed to step up my confidence and that’s how I was going to help out my team.”

Charlston only hit two of her first nine attempts, but went 4-for-7 to close the contest. She also had five blocked shots and five rebounds.

Eastlake jumped out to a fast start, taking an 11-0 lead at the 4:01 mark of the first quarter. The Wolves took their largest lead of the game, 28-14, at the 2:02 mark of the second quarter when Laura Bachman drilled her fourth three-pointer of the first half. Bachman was 4-for-7 from behind the three-point line and had all of her 12 points in the half.

“They weren’t guarding her,” Sartorious said. “As a coach, I’m thinking lets work the ball around a little bit, but she would catch it on the wing and would have 10 feet.”

Ellie Martinez was the third Eastlake player to reach 12 points. She had six of those in the first quarter.

The Wolves improved to 3-2 in league and 5-3 overall with the win. Eastlake faced Lake Washington on Wednesday night after the Reporter deadline. They host rival Redmond at 6:30 p.m., tonight.

Garfield 56,

Eastlake 53 (OT)

Eastlake led by seven points with 3:30 to go Friday night against Garfield, but couldn’t hang on.

“We had a couple turnovers, a couple fouls and a couple of missed free throws, and it was all grouped into the same chunk of time,” Sartorious said.

The Bulldogs battled back in the final three minutes to tie the game and send it to overtime where they nabbed a 56-53 victory.

Martinez scored a game-high 17, while Charlston had 15 points, eight rebounds and nine blocks. Demarea Caples had 16 points for Garfield.