A slow start and a potent inside-outside combination from Galena proved to be a little too much for the Douglas High girls' basketball team Tuesday night.
Galena pulled away with a 64-50 win in Reno, getting 28 points from standout sophomore center Emily Burns along the way.
Douglas kept Burns under wraps in the first half, holding her to just four points, but the perimeter defense suffered as the Grizzlies hit six of their nine first-half field goals from outside the 3-point line.
The tables turned in the second as Douglas made the defensive adjustment along the perimeter (Galena had just one second-half 3-pointer), but Burns caught fire inside with 24 points.
"We tried to make an adjustment outside, we had to with six 3-pointers," Douglas coach Werner Christen said. "We thought we were solid underneath but Burns just went off. We ran two or three different people at her and she scored against all of them. She just had a heck of a second half."
The game traveled on plenty of momentum swings as Galena built an early 10-5 lead only to have Douglas shut them out over the final 4:33 of the first quarter, closing the gap to one.
Douglas struggled to settle into a rhythm offensively early on, and that carried through much of the rest of the game.
"We didn't create anything with our defense," Christen said. "They did a good job of getting us out of our comfort zone on offense. No excuses, they got the job done."
Galena jumped back out by eight on a 9-3 run to open the second, but the Douglas defense settled in once again, holding the Grizzlies to just six point the rest of the half.
On the other side, the Tigers put up 16 points to go into the locker rooms with a 28-27 lead, thanks to a flurry of action in the final 13 seconds during which Ne'Jae Jackson and Taryn Williams each scored a basket.
Jessica Waggoner opened the second half with a layup to put Douglas up 30-27 but Galena answered with a 15-2 run over the next five minutes.
Waggoner put a stop to the run with a 3-pointer, followed by a lay-up and a baseline jumper, completing a personal 7-0 run and closing the gap to 42-39 with 44 seconds left in the third.
The Tigers wouldn't get any closer, however, as Galena's Kristin Agaman scored at the buzzer and the Grizzlies put up a 20-point fourth quarter to pull away with the game. Fourteen of those 20 points came from the free throw line in the final three minutes of the game as Douglas was fouling in an effort to try to close the gap.
"We didn't start well and it snowballed from there," Christen said. "We scored 50 points, normally you win with that, but defensively we just weren't very good tonight."
