Wolverines Girls Basketball Season Ends with Loss to Mercer Island

MERCER ISLAND -- The Bellevue girls basketball team is out of the playoffs, after Mercer Island's Jae Shin scored 21 points and Islanders' dominating second-half effort ended Bellevue's season with a 55-40 victory over the Wolverines Saturday night at Mercer Island High School.

Natalie Anderson scored 14 points to lead Bellevue, which struggled mightily on offense in the second half of the in a loser-out KingCo 3A/2A match-up, making just four field goals over the final two quarters.

"We just couldn't make any shots," Bellevue head coach Ron Tinin said of the final two quarters. "They hit everything, we didn't make anything."

The two teams were tied at halftime before Mercer Island's offense came alive in the second half, ripping off a 26-8 run to put the game away.

"We have a saying of 'no regrets'," Islander point guard Hailey Gullstad, who scored 14 points, said. "Coach [Jamie Prescott] just wrote it on the board [at halftime] and we realized that we only had 16 minutes left if we lost, so we just had to come out and get the win."

While Mercer Island was putting it together offensively, Bellevue's offense fell apart in the second half. The Wolverines made just four field goals in the entire second half, missing 12 of 13 shots at one point. 

The game took on a physical tone from the start, with both teams quickly getting into foul trouble. Bellevue seemed to use the tone to their advantage in the first half, starting the game on a 6-0 run and rattling the Islanders out of their usual long-range shooting game.

"I think we were so worried about what they were trying to do, that we didn't do what we do," Prescott said of her teams slow start. "We've been talking a lot about counters to different defenses and I think they were spending so much time worrying about what the other team was running that we didn't run what we run."

Once the Islanders got into a rhythm, the game changed quickly. Shin was fouled on a three-point attempt early in the third quarter and hit all three throws, sparking a quick 10-2 run, capped by a three from Shin.

"Jae has never had a red light or a yellow light," Prescott said of Shin's aggressive shooting nature.

Mercer Island pushed its lead to 18 early in the fourth quarter and Bellevue never got closer than 13 points the rest of the way.

The loss ends what has been a frustrating season for Bellevue, which started the year slowly before putting together a five-game winning streak late. That stretch was not enough to help Bellevue avoid the bottom seed of the KingCo 3A/2A tournament, a fact that Tinin lamented after the game.

"We played our best basketball the last five or six games of the year," Tinin said. "We should have never put ourselves in this situation where we were playing these guys for a loser out."