After last night’s win over Seattle Prep the Mercer Island girls basketball team earned their spot in the Sea-King District tournament championship game. They will take on the Holy Names Cougars Saturday night (8:15 p.m. tipoff) at Bellevue College.

The Islanders have cemented their spot in next week’s state tournament at the Tacoma Dome which starts on Wednesday. Once there is an updated bracket we’ll let you know when and who the Islanders will be facing.

Until then here’s a quick look at the two teams facing off on Saturday night.

Mercer Island finished their regular season with a 11-1 KingCo record and 20-4 overall record. Top scorers include Hannah Lilly, averaging 13.2 points per game, Hailey Gullstad, averaging 10.5 per game and Jae Shin with 9.9 per game. The Islanders are well versed at spreading the offensive duties around, so pretty much anyone can score at any time. Gullstad came out of last night’s game against Seattle Prep after she crashed into the padding behind the basket in the first minute of the fourth quarter. She sat out the rest of the game and no word on whether or not it will force her to day Saturday night off, but with four days to rest we’ll have to wait and see.

Holy Names finished their Metro season undefeated at 16-0 and have a 22-2 overall record. The Cougars leading scorers, junior guard Claire Conricode averages 14.1 per game, while junior forward Erika Johnson averages 12.1 a game. During the team’s 66-47 win over Cleveland on Tuesday afternoon Conricode had 20 points, while freshman Sophie Reichelt had 22 points, the game high.

The Cougars are tall and athletic so it should make for an exciting match up against the Islanders on Saturday. Seattle Prep had trouble slowing down the Mercer Island offense, as have many teams this season. It should make for an exciting match-up on Saturday.

Who will be Sea-King champs?

(polls)

The All-KingCo basketball teams were announced at the end of the KingCo basketball tournament last Friday night.

Named to the first team from Mercer Island was junior Quinn Sterling and senior Kaj Sherman. Brian Miller received an honorable mention, while Bellevue’s Aaron Bright was named the KingCo boys league MVP and Sammamish coach Wes Newton was coach of the year.

Robert Burmeister/Contributed photo

In the girls league Hailey Gullstad was named the MVP while Islander head coach Jamie Prescott was the coach of the year.
Named to the first team from Mercer Island was Hannah Lilly, while Kate DaPron and Jae Shin were named to the second team.

The Reporter sports writers are taking a break from the basketball poll this week, not many new wins or losses in the last week to make any difference to our teams. Next week we’ll be back in full swing.

A big game to note however is tomorrow night the Mercer Island girls will take on Newport (who is currntly undefeated) at Newport (a change from the original schedule) starting at 7:30 p.m. While the team’s are not in the same classification anymore it used to be a big rivarly and still is a game both sides look forward to each year. I’ll be updating live from the event with scores etc. at MIRsports from Twitter if you want to follow along!

So tune in next week to see where the MI girls and boys fit into the state’s top 10 4A/3A girls and boys teams.