The Juneau-Douglas girls basketball team defeated reigning Region V champion Ketchikan on Friday night in the Clarke Cochrane Gymnasium.<\/p>\n
JDHS (7-2, 1-0 SEC) got a big game from senior Caitlin Pusich for a 50-35 Southeast Conference win. Pusich finished with 21 points, Alyxn Bohulano added nine and Sadie Tuckwood and Kiana Potter scored six apiece.<\/p>\n
JDHS coach Steve Potter said defense made the difference, and singled out sophomore Jenae Pusich’s outstanding job slowing down Ketchikan’s main engine, senior Ashley Huffine.<\/p>\n
The Crimson Bears led by 11 in the first quarter and 13 in the third. Up 20-17 at halftime, JDHS spread the scoring wealth around between seven players to regain a double-digit third quarter lead.<\/p>\n
Lianne Guevarra led the Lady Kings with 11 points, Nadire Zhuta had nine points and Huffine three points.<\/p>\n
Ketchikan went to the free throw line just three times, shooting 4-of-6. JDHS shot 14-of-21 free throws.<\/p>\n
JDHS boys 56, Homer 42<\/strong><\/p>\n The Juneau-Douglas High School boys basketball team picked up its first win at the South O’Brady’s Invitational on Friday evening.<\/p>\n Sophomore Cooper Kriegmont scored a team-high 24 points as the Crimson Bears downed Homer at South Anchorage High School in Anchorage.<\/p>\n Senior Krishant Samtani put in 17 points in the victory, which sets up a tournament-closing matchup against Service at 3:30 p.m. on Saturday. Service, who lost in the first round to Ketchikan, defeated the South Anchorage junior varsity team earlier in the day.<\/p>\n “We always have to lock in, play hard, play focused and play strong, and I think we did a nice job of that today,” Samtani said.<\/p>\n Homer took a 30-26 lead early in the third quarter before starting to crumble against JDHS’ full-court defense, giving up three steals in row for JDHS points. Up until that point, neither team was able to sustain momentum for more than a few minutes at a time.<\/p>\n “The guys started to play with a little more fire and a little more energy in that third quarter,” JDHS coach Robert Casperson said. “Our rotations were better and our hands were active.”<\/p>\n Kriegmont’s steal and score tied the game at 30-30, and after another heist, the sophomore’s 3-pointer made it 35-30. The lead ballooned 39-30, and the Crimson Bears started the fourth quarter ahead 39-35.<\/p>\n Homer jumped out to an 11-5 first-quarter lead, but Samtani kept things interesting in the second session. The sharpshooter’s 3-pointer trimmed what was once an 11-point deficit to just one, 24-23, late in the half, and the Crimson Bears went into the locker room down 26-23.<\/p>\n “We had some struggles early, I just tried to push … and we came out the win,” Samtani said.<\/p>\n \u2022 Contact sports reporter Nolin Ainsworth at 523-2272 or nainsworth@juneauempire.com. Follow Empire Sports on Twitter at @akempiresports.<\/b><\/p>\n Friday hoops to our north and south. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":425,"featured_media":41618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,6],"tags":[203,222,217],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-41617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-sports","tag-sportbasketball","tag-high-school","tag-juneau-douglas-high-school"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/425"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41617"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=41617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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