Spartans Within Firing Range

Reyes’ Shooting, Zapien’s Milestone Lift Granger Girls Past Lakeside ||

YAKIMA, Wash. — People around the Granger girls basketball team call it “Fantasia range.”

It’s the range within which junior guard Fantasia Reyes is comfortable shooting — and, by extension, absolutely deadly. Just how far and wide is Fantasia range? Well, think in terms of an area code.

Granger's Samantha Zapien defends Lakeside's Jamie Campbell during the 1A state basketball tournament at the Yakima SunDome, on Thursday, March, 4 2010. (Andy Sawyer/Yakima Herald-Republic)

“Anything over halfcourt, she’s in Fantasia range,” Spartans coach Andy Affholter said with a grin after Reyes buried five of six 3-point attempts, a couple of them from NBA range, and scored 20 points as Granger rolled to a 61-40 quarterfinal victory over Lakeside and move into a 6 p.m. semi against SCAC rival Connell.

“She has a stroke,” Affholter said. “When she gets it going …”

On Thursday, she got it going pretty much every time the Spartans (23-1) needed it. Reyes hit an NBA trey that barely beat the buzzer ending the first quarter, and then hit four during a 20-4 Granger run spanning the third and fourth quarters — right after the Eagles (22-4) had rallied to pull within 38-32.

“Sometimes it helps when someone is on our case like that,” said senior forward Sam Zapien, whose 13 points pushed her over the 1,000-point career scoring mark (now with 1,004). “It lights a fire under our butt.”

And Reyes was definitely feeling in the shooting groove, with that shooter’s certainty that any shot she took would find nothing but net.

“It feels like that. It feels good,” she said. “And I know my teammates are going to get the ball to me.”

Zapien and point guard Janae Klarich were clearly looking to get the ball to Reyes during that run.

“She’s a great asset, as you can see,” Klarich said. “If ’Tasia’s open, why not get it to her? It’s quite exciting sometimes when we’re running a play and she puts it up and you’re like, ‘No …’ and then it goes in. Hey, great shot.”

Klarich, meanwhile, after taking only two shots while dishing out a half-dozen assists in Wednesday’s first-round victory, took a more active role in the scoring on Thursday, going 4-for-7 from the field with a pair of 3-pointers for 11 points.

“I just wait until it comes to me,” Klarich said. “If somebody else is open, it doesn’t matter who scores as long as we’re winning.”

It looked like the Spartans might win easily when they jumped out to a 16-7 first-quarter lead. Lakeside got back into the game largely because of solid work inside from 5-10 forward Kendra Lehue (14 points, five rebounds), but 6-foot Alex Daggy and Leslie Stillar spent much of the game in foul trouble and were held to a combined 16 points.

Granger, meanwhile, outrebounded the significantly taller Eagles 30-23, with Ashlee Reddout hitting the boards for 10, and the Eagles had no answer when Reyes went on her scoring binge.

Now the Spartans face a red-hot Connell team that has beaten top-ranked Seattle Christian and No. 5 Okanogan on back-to-back days. And Connell also very nearly knocked off Granger in a regular-season game, losing by a single point — albeit a team that didn’t have Klarich, the 2009 state-tournament MVP during the Spartans’ second-place run.

“It’s nice because we’re playing a team we know,” Zapien said.

“Yeah, but then again,” Klarich interjected, “they know us to. They play hard. It’ll be another fight to the finish.”