Arlee girls advance to divisionals after solid performance

Zach Urness - Leader Staff

LIBBY — With a strong showing at last week’s district tournament, the Arlee Scarlets punched their ticket for the Western B divisional tournament in Missoula, which starts today.

“We’re excited to be there,” said head coach Anne Tanner. “We’ve showed some real improvement. Of course we are playing Loyola, at Loyola, and that is kind of a bummer. But we’re happy to be there.”

Arlee went 2-2 over the weekend, good enough for fourth place. They beat Superior and Troy and lost to eventual champion Mission and dropped a close one to Plains in the consolation championship game.

Ty Gardipe had her coming out party in the Scarlet’s first-round game against Troy, dropping a game-high 29 points to lead the team to a 63-34 pummeling of the Trojans on Wednesday, Feb. 14. Arlee pulled away from Troy in the second half, outscoring the Trojans 31-10. Freshman sensation Jordan Pfau, the District 8-B leading scorer, hit the Scarlets only 3-point basket en route to 17 points and Kayla Thomas followed with seven. Kristin Sansevere had five points, Shelbie Piedalue had two points as did Shayline Wilson.

“That was our best game of the tournament,” said Tanner. “Our transition game really took off. Ty got a lot of open lay-ups.”

The Scarlets had a tougher time in the semi-final game against the Mission Lady Bulldogs, who would go on to win the tournament. Arlee stayed within striking distance throughout the game, but ended up losing 56-34.

“We just didn’t have an answer for Ashley Mitchell,” said Tanner. “We didn’t really stick to our offense, and give them credit, they were the better team.”

Shelbie Piedalue led the team with 10 points. Kristin Sansevere, Ty Gardipe, Kelci Apland and Shaylene Wilson each had six points, and Jordan Pfau had three.

Arlee rallied, however, and in the loser-out game the Scarlets used a dominating first half, outscoring Superior 31-9, to win easily, 50-26. Pfau recovered nicely after the tough game against Mission and scored a game-high 22 points, 15 of which came in the first half. Ty Gardipe followed with 11 points and Kristin Sansevere had seven. Shelbie Piedalue had three points and Chelsea Allaire had two.

“That was a tough, physical game,” commented Tanner. “We got the win, but we played sloppy and had too many turnovers.”

In the consolation championship Arlee came up against a tough Plains team. After falling behind 24-13 midway through the second quarter the Scarlets rallied, getting tough defense and four points off turnovers from Ty Gardipe, and after a jump-shot from Kayla Thomas went down the game was tied 27-27 midway through the third.

Things began to unravel for Arlee at that point, though, as the Scarlets were called for a technical foul. Plains took advantage, making all of their free throws and getting two steals and scores before the Scarlets could even get past half-court. The Trotters then went on a 12-0 run and ended up outscoring Arlee 26-17 in the third quarter. Despite a driving lay-up from Jordan Pfau and a trey from Sansavere, the Scarlets couldn’t make a serious charge in the fourth, and they ended up losing 63-45.

“Everything that could go wrong in that game did,” said Tanner. “We had three starters with three fouls at half time and that kind of jammed things up. We opened the door and let them walk right through it.”

Shelbie Piedalue led the team with 15 points and Ty Gardipe followed with 10. Kristin Sansevere scored eight, Jordan Pfau had six and Kelsey Apland had two.

Arlee will travel to Missoula for the divisional tournament on Thursday where they will face an extremely difficult game against top-ranked Missoula Loyola. “All you can do against a team like Loyola is do the little things well,” explained Tanner. “We’re going to work hard, have fun and try to do the little things right.”