Metro League Scores A Title Sweep -- Lakeside, Franklin Make City Sweep At AA Tournament
One was expected, and the Lakeside girls delivered.
The other was unexpected, and the Franklin boys surprised everybody.
For only the second time in the history of the Class AA state high-school basketball tournament, the Metro League swept both championships.
Top-ranked Lakeside beat seventh-ranked Meadowdale 75-49 Saturday night at the Tacoma Dome - capping a 29-0 season. It was the Lions' fourth state championship in the past six years. They are 86-1 over the past three seasons.
It's a different story for the Franklin boys team. The underdog Quakers were a surprising finalist and an even bigger suprise as a champion. A team with only one senior, they capped a most amazing state-tournament ride by rallying in the second half to dispose of seventh-ranked Aberdeen 71-55 Saturday night at the Tacoma Dome.
The Quakers (19-10) finished in a sixth-place tie in the Metro League and arrived at state as the No. 4 entry from the Sea-King District. They are believed to be the first state champions with as many as 10 losses.
They overcame Aberdeen (21-6) in the second half after trailing 29-28 at halftime.
UCLA-bound omm'A Givens, a 6-foot-11 senior, gave Bobcat fans something to cheer about in the final two minutes when he broke the all-time individual state high-school career scoring record. He finished with 28 points for a four-year total (the first two seasons at Class B Raymond) of 2,300 points, eight more than the standard set by Ephrata's Travis King last season.
Givens also had 16 rebounds.
Jason Terry led Franklin with 24 points and Tommy Mitchell scored 14 points and had nine rebounds.
It's the second state basketball championship for Franklin. The Quakers won the 1954 Class AAA state title.
The Metro League's other boy-girl Class AA title sweep came in 1989 - Lakeside girls, Chief Sealth boys.
Metro has had two boy-girl title sweeps at the Class AAA state tournament - Garfield in 1980 and again in 1987.
The state basketball championship total for the Metro League reached 30 - four for AA girls (all Lakeside), five for AA boys, two for AAA girls (both Garfield) and 19 for AAA boys (10 by Garfield).
Blanchet, a current Metro member, played in the Western Conference when it won the 1963 Class AAA boys championship.
Class AA girls - Down 25-18 with 5:27 left in the second quarter, Lakeside erupted for eight consecutive points against the No. 7 Chiefs (24-4). Then Takiyah Jackson, a 6-foot junior forward, delivered a wake-up call that detonated a Lions' attack that set a pair of tournament records.
Lakeside's 75 points were the most ever scored in a championship game in the tournament's 17-year history. And the 26-point title-game margin broke the record of 24 set in Lakeside's 57-33 win over Kennedy in 1991.
Jackson wound up with 25 points to fall only two short of the the tournament's all-time career-leading 209 points, set earlier Saturday by Mount Vernon senior Kim Brydges.
Andrea Freimuth had 17 points and Zakiya Pressley 15 for the Lions.
Class AAA girls - The jump from Class AA to Class AAA made no difference for Prairie. The Falcons from Brush Prairie made it back-to-back state tournament championships when they beat Clark County rival Battle Ground 40-22 Saturday night for the AAA crown at the Seattle Coliseum.
Prairie won the AA crown in 1993 and became the first school in the state to win back-to-back basketball titles after moving up a classification.
Prairie (23-3) and Battle Ground (24-3) both play in the Greater St. Helens League in southwest Washington. The Tigers and Falcons split four games this season.
Battle Ground also moved up from Class AA to Class AAA this season. The Tigers won the Class AA title in 1991.