To say the tides turned for the Fort Lewis women’s basketball team wouldn’t do it justice.
It was more like a tsunami had crashed into the Skyhawks in Friday’s RMAC game against Black Hills State, and the Skyhawks never recovered.
The Skyhawks had a 26-16 lead after the first quarter. Fort Lewis appeared on a path to victory with crisp passing and good shooting. But that tsunami hit in the second quarter, the Skyhawks were outscored 27-7 from that point on and lost 87-53.
Fort Lewis fell to 12-13 overall and 9-10 in the Rocky Mountain Athletic Conference after shooting 38% from the field, 29% from the 3-point line and 63% from the foul line.
The Skyhawks are now two games back of the eighth and final spot in the RMAC tournament.
Black Hills State improved to 15-8 overall and 12-7 in the RMAC after shooting 56% from the field, 48% from 3-point range and 56% from the free-throw line.
“You’ve got to give Black Hills credit,” Fort Lewis coach Taylor Harris said. “They just played really good team basketball. They did a really good job. We had an awesome start, an awesome first quarter, we scored 26 points and then we don’t go past 10 the next three quarters. What are you going to do?”
Sophomore guard Lanae Billy led the Skyhawks with 14 points on 6 of 13 shooting from the field and 2 of 6 shooting from 3-point range. Twelve of those points came in the first quarter.
Senior forward Kelsey Sorenson and junior forward Samantha Wattawa each had eight points.
“It wasn’t great,” Harris said about his offense. “We talked about it at halftime and a few timeouts. During that run in the second quarter, we went away from extra passes and we went too much one-on-one … Lanae and Kate are still young players are they’re still trying to see that.”
Black Hills State’s Ella Moore had 18 points on 9 of 12 shooting. Kalla Bertram scored 13 points on 5 of 8 shooting from the field and 3 of 4 from downtown.
Billy was all over the place to start of this game. She had two steals, seven points and an assist in the first three minutes to put the Skyhawks up 9-2.
Black Hills State started finding holes in Fort Lewis’ zone defense. The Yellow Jackets found space inside and started scoring in the paint, cutting the Skyhawks’ league to 13-8 with 4:30 left in the opening frame.
With junior guard Sadie Misner unavailable, junior forward Samantha Wattawa showed her versatility by playing at the top of the zone. Wattawa has played on the wing and in the middle this season.
“I like her up there because of her natural instincts from being a soccer player,” Harris said about Wattawa. “The downside is she’s our leading rebounder right now, so you have your leading rebounder up on the perimeter.”
Wattawa used her length for a great steal at the top and kicked it out for a Billy 3-pointer. Fort Lewis led 26-16 after the first quarter.
Harris was unimpressed with his team’s defense to start the second. The Yellow Jackets got two layups to start the second quarter to cut the Skyhawks’ lead to 26-20 before Harris called a timeout with 9:06 remaining.
Black Hills State’s Jaylen Ostenson hit a 3-pointer off good ball movement and Gracie Haneborg hit a 3-pointer to take the lead 28-26 with 6:45 left before halftime.
Fort Lewis had numerous turnovers in this span and looked totally out of sync on offense. Black Hills State started the second quarter on a 15-0 run.
Skyhawks senior guard Ember Cervantes ended this run with a free-throw. Another Morgan Hammerbeck 3-pointer pushed the Yellow Jackets lead to 34-27 with 4:20 left. The Yellow Jackets started the second quarter shooting 7 of 10 from the field and 4 of 5 from 3-point range.
“In the second quarter in particular, they really hurt us with offensive rebounds and driving by us,” Harris said. “Our one on one defense really hurt us but we had a few turnovers in a row and they really connected on those turnovers.”
Black Hills State led 43-33 at half. The Yellow Jackets also out-rebounded the Skyhawks 14-5 with six offensive rebounds.
The Skyhawks forced shots in the third quarter as the deficit grew, and they also struggled to get Billy good looks.
Black Hills State continued to score inside with its size advantage. Sorenson went down hard at the end of the quarter on a double foul and hit her head and was taken out of the game. Fort Lewis trailed 60-43 after three quarters.
“We’re just not very big,” Harris said. “It is what it is. We’re trying, we’re watching film and we’re making an emphasis on it. We know we’re going to get out-rebounded, we’ve just got to try and create turnovers to make up for it.”
The meltdown continued to start the fourth quarter with a terrible dribble handoff, which was stolen and taken the other way for a Yellow Jackets layup.
Black Hills State started the fourth quarter on a 10-0 run, as the Skyhawks looked checked out facing a 70-43 deficit. An and-one bucket pushed the lead to 73-45 with 6:42 left and Harris benched his starters and put in the bench with 6:20 remaining to rest his starters for Saturday’s game against South Dakota Mines.
Fort Lewis will also celebrate Senior Day for Cervantes and Sorenson on Saturday at 4 p.m.
bkelly@durangoherald.com
