Three-pointers bury Waterloo West in semifinals

DES MOINES -- Tony Pappas couldn't do much but shrug.

The Waterloo West girls' basketball team featured a front-line of three Division-I recruits this season. They took a record of 22-2 into the Class 5A semifinals on Friday afternoon against Southeast Polk, which finished just fifth in its own conference this season and missed its leading scorer.

But when one team shoots 5-of-27 from behind the three-point arc and the other hits 10 threes in 23 attempts, none of that matters so much.

"That's tough," Wahawks coach Pappas said after his team lost, 54-46. "They hit some big shots, and we just missed our shots. Tough shooting day for us."

"We're usually the ones hitting those threes," Haley Puk, a Bowling Green commit, said. "It was the opposite of what we're used to."

West scrapped its way to a four-point halftime lead despite a 2-of-13 performance from behind the arc. But then Southeast Polk, who Pappas called "the best three-point shooting team in the state," began firing away.

Abby Penquite cut the lead to one with a triple to start the second half. West's Sammie Sproul answered with a baseline jumper, only to see Penquite hit another three to tie the game.

Every time Waterloo West began to separate, the Rams hit from long-range to pull closer. A 35-30 West lead turned into a 37-39 deficit in just two minutes thanks to a pair of threes to start the fourth quarter, and the Wahawks never led again.

Abby Penquite scored 15 points for Southeast Polk, while her sister Annie Penquite added 12 on four three-pointers. The Rams' Jessica Cole scored 16 on 3-4 shooting from downtown.

"We're a shooting team," Abby Penquite said. "We're all shooters. It's a fun feeling when you make a three in front of a big crowd."Waterloo West felt the flip side of that feeling.

Puk scored 15 points in her final game for West. Kate Letkewicz, a Dartmouth commit, shot just 1-11 and missed all five threes she attempted. While the Wahawks kept misfiring from outside, center Blair Thomas kept them in the game down low. The Iowa State recruit tallied 18 points and 11 rebounds, but it wasn't enough to keep up with the Rams' sharp-shooters.

"It doesn't feel as good without getting the job done," she said. "We knew it was going to come down to whose shots were going to fall, and that's what it came down to."