Ryan Murken

Your Prep Sports

WEST BRANCH – Mary Halvorsen hopes her Regina team gets one more shot at third-ranked West Branch this season in a Class 2A regional title game.

On Tuesday Halvorsen issued a warning for any team tasked with trying to slow the Bears between now and then – focus solely on senior standout Sasha Koenig at your own risk.

Koenig scored 16 points but three other Bears joined her in double figures as West Branch (16-1) pulled away for a 63-45 win over Regina (10-6) in a River Valley Conference South Division showdown in West Branch.

“They are a total team package and it’s just like wildfire, if one sparks, especially in this gym in this environment it just spreads like a wild fire,” Halvorsen said of West Branch. “It didn’t even feel like it was Koenig hitting them it was everyone else.”

West Branch got contributions from all over the court on Tuesday while stretch its winning streak to 13 and completing the season sweep of the Regals.

Koenig was her solid self with 16 points and seven assists but the senior point guard had help from all over.

Every West Branch player excelled in precisely what they are put on the court to do as the Bears shot 47 percent from the field and hit eight 3-pointers.

Senior sharpshooter Lexie Peak went 4-of-6 from 3-point range on her way to 16 points, Taya Young slashed her way to the basket for 13 points and Rylan Druecker hit a pair of 3-pointers and finished with seven points.

“We are really hard to defend, if we have shots dropping in teams can’t really guard us,” Senior guard Taya Young said. “We are all really quick and we can shoot and we have girls that can play inside, we have girls that can shoot the three it is nice to have so many threats on the team. I feel bad for the teams that have to play us because when we are making shots we aren’t stopping.”

An added element for West Branch is an intimidating post presence in 6-foot-2 junior Delaynie Luneckas who had a double-double with 11 points, 12 rebound and five blocked shots.

“When we are playing our roles and doing our thing we are hard to defend,” Peak said. “We have so many options, we have our bigs down low, Taya is great at driving, we have great shooters from the outside. We are tough to stop.

Both teams were tough to stop early on Tuesday.

West Branch led 18-14 after a fast-paced first quarter and closed the half with four quick points to take a 32-25 halftime lead.

Just as it did in a 52-36 loss to West Branch last month Regina hung around.

The Regals got as close as 40-35 with 1:18 left in the third quarter on a steal and layup by Annie Gahan who was fantastic while finishing with a game-high 23 points and six rebounds.

“I think she is just putting it all out there,” Halvorsen said of Gahan. “She is a competitor through and through but I think now she knows its almost the end of it all and it’s the most important part and she’s peaking at the right time. She played really strong tonight.”

West Branch pushed the lead back to double digits with a 5-0 run to end the third quarter on a Luneckas basket in the paint and a Young 3-pointer.

The Bears then broke the game open with a 9-0 run to open the fourth quarter that spanned just 83 seconds and featured 3-pointers from Druecker and Peak and a Young driving layup.

“We definitely let them hang around for a long time and starting out that fourth quarter we had to pull our stuff together and make it happen,” Peak said. “We finally were able to put it away.”

Gahan had 15 of her game-high 23 points in the opening half but was held in check by Koenig in the second half.

Meanwhile, Koenig had 10 of her 16 in the opening quarter before Gahan switched onto the smaller point guard.

“I thought Sasha did a fairly good job because Gahan was awfully good tonight, my gosh, she was really good,” West Branch coach Jarod Tylee said. “The second half we put Sasha on her and for the most part I thought she did a pretty good job on her.”

The win locked up a second consecutive RVC South Division title for West Branch which improved to 11-0 against South Division foes this season.

West Branch will close the regular season on Thursday at Mid-Prairie.

“I think this makes the statement that we have the same goals as last year,” Koenig said. “We wanted to do the same things we did last year with no let up and I think we proved that.”

and it showed tonight in the scoreboard with multiple girls with double digit points.”

Regina                           14  11  10  10  –  45

West Branch               18  14  13  18  –  63

West Branch (63) – Lexie Peak 6-8 0-0 16, Sasha Koenig 5-15 5-5 16, Delaynie Luneckas 5-8 1-1 11, Rylan Druecker 2-6 1-2 7, Savannah Sexton 0-2 0-0 0, Lexi Klinkkammer 0-1 0-0 0, Taya Young 6-11 0-0 13, Totals 24-51 7-8 63.

Regina (45) – Grace Gaarde 4-8 0-0 12, Madelyn Greve 1-1 0-1 2, Annie Gahan 8-13 5-5 23, Christelle Tungu 0-1 0-0 0, Abby Clark 1-5 0-0 2, Gabrielle Sueppel 0-1 0-0 0, Lilly Simpson 2-6 2-2 6, Hope Simpson 0-3 0-0 0, Alli Dillon 0-3 0-0 0, Emma Panther 0-1 0-0 0, Totals 16-42 7-8 45.

3-point field goals – WB 8-22 (Peak 4-5, Koenig 1-9, Luneckas 0-1, Druecker 2-4, Sexton 0-1, Klinkkammer 0-1, Young 1-1), ICR 6-17 (Gaarde 4-8, Gahan 2-4, Clark 0-2, H. Simpson 0-2, Dillon 0-1). Rebounds – WB 30 (Luneckas 11), ICR 24 (Gahan 6). Turnovers – WB 10, ICR 15. Total fouls – WB 8, ICR 9. Fouled out – None. Technical fouls – None.

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