Tonight was a big night for Greater Spokane League basketball as the two main contenders for the title, 3A Mt. Spokane and 4A Central Valley, met for their one1 game of the season. Going into the game I expected Mt. Spokane to handle Central Valley by about eight points because they're a solid team, and they have junior Tyson Degenhart, the best player in the league by far right now.
That didn't turn out to be the case though. Central Valley jumped out to an early lead, led almost the entire game until Mt. Spokane briefly took a 1 point lead at the end of the game before ultimately losing by 3. Degenhart had 18 points, but he and his teammates were a combined 20/30 from the free throw line and that was probably the difference in the 55-58 loss to the Bears.
At this point Central Valley should probably be undefeated, but their lone loss of the season was an inexplicable 3 point defeat to Richland2 in their third game. All cylinders are clearly firing now though, as they've won eight straight games since.
In terms of the final regular season stretch Central Valley has a much more challenging road to a GSL title than Mt. Spokane. The Wildcats have only three 4A teams remaining (G-Prep, Ferris, and rival Mead) in their final eight games. Central Valley on the other hand has seven remaining against the other 4A teams, and any of these five3 (rival University twice, G-Prep, Ferris, and Mead) ara as capable of taking a game as Richland if the Bears have a bad outing.
Second place in the 4A ranks is also still very much in play and should start sorting itself out Friday when Mead (4-1) plays G-Prep (4-1), and Ferris (3-2) plays University (2-3). Prep and Ferris have improved from the start of the season, but any of the four could go on a several game run to close out the season and lock down a top spot.
3A and 4A classification teams only play each other once during the season to allow league teams to schedule some non conference games and improve their RPI, the performance index used to seed the State Tournament. This is doubly beneficial for the 4A teams because outside of Mt. Spokane the remaining 3A GSL teams are not competitive.
6-4 on the season so far and nowhere near as good as they've been for the last several years.
Lewis & Clark has a quality coach in Jim Redmon, but at 1-11 they're not on par with the other 4A schools right now.