One of The Bear Creek School’s basketball teams is a perennial state contender coming off a perfect 11-0 league season. The other has only been to the state tournament once — in 2007 and failed to win a game — and didn’t even have a coach with two weeks to go before the 2010-11 season started.

Despite the high expectations of the boys’ squad and the hardships that the Lady Grizzlies have faced this season, the two teams, a combined 18-0 in Sea-Tac 2B League play, have been dismantling opponents in the league this season.

The boys’ team has outscored its last three opponents — Tacoma Baptist, Seattle Lutheran and Rainier Christian, 211-82, while the girls have nearly doubled their competition’s output, 139-72, against those same three opponents.

“So far, so good,” said Bear Creek Athletic Director Chad Pohlman in reference to the Grizzlies’ dominance, adding that the girls’ team was very fortunate to pick up new head coach Greg Cheever after Alan Dickson, who guided the team to within one game of the 2010 state tournament, left to take over Cedar Park Christian’s girls’ program two weeks before the season began.

ALL IN THE FAMILY

The Lady Grizzlies, after polishing off a 46-20 rout of the Rainier Christian Mustangs on Tuesday night to improve to 8-0 in league and 15-0 overall, have come a long way since the first day of practice, where Cheever’s engaging, disciplined style of coaching has helped the girls reach the next level.

“We started out with the topic of being a family, and the ladies have really worked well keeping that theme together,” said Cheever, who was an assistant with the boys’ team before taking over the girls’ program. “We’re working through all the issues, playing hard together, having great practices. That’s been a strong backbone for us.”

The Grizzlies’ tri-captains, juniors Nikki Peterson, Morgan Rial and Kendall Engelstone, have been leading the way along with 2B state high-jump champion Maddie Magee and 6-foot-2 freshman post Catherine Fernandez, who is currently fourth in the league at 11.5 points per game.

“Our starting five has done a great job all year long, and now they’ve brought our bench along as well,” Cheever noted. “Our reserves have really stepped it up to push our starters and become meaningful members of our game squad.”

The Grizzlies are one win away from locking up the league’s No. 1 seed, which would mean a home matchup with the league’s No. 8 seed in the 2B Bi-District tournament opener Feb. 12. Should they win that game, they will be just one game away from their first state-tournament berth in four years.

While the 2B classification often has a large disparity in skill level between schools, Cheever says his girls will be ready when they get to the playoffs against teams with a proven track record.

“We try to make sure our practices are competitive as possible,” he said. “We try and compete to the best of our ability within the games as well.”

FIRE AWAY

The Grizzly boys’ dominating win over the Mustangs, 78-28, on Tuesday night, a team that took them into overtime the last time they played (58-54 on Jan. 13), reinforced the feeling that the Grizzlies may just be untouchable.

After a slow first period that saw the score knotted at 10-10, the Grizzlies put together one of their best quarters of the season.

In front of a raucous, capacity crowd, the home squad out-rebounded the Mustangs 12-2, forced six Mustang turnovers, and went on a 20-1 run which included six straight Grizzly buckets.

“We subbed in some guys off the bench, changed our defensive game plan, just pressured them and ran,” Bear Creek coach Scott Moe explained. “I thought Gabe (Rongve), Jesse (Leuenberger) and Lucas Fernandez had a great game, those guys gave us a huge spark. All eight guys contributed in a big way.”

Late in the game that he described as “truly a team win,” Moe called up some of his young, untested bench players – and they almost never missed from long range.

As a team, in the second half, the Grizzlies combined to shoot a phenomenal 9-of-11 from beyond the arc and 15-of-22 (68 percent) from the field.

As solid as their offense was, their defense may have been even better. The Grizzlies picked off a large number of Mustang passes, and dominated the boards against a team that had plenty of height down low in 6-7 senior Matt Olsen and two other players 6-6 and 6-5.

“It was huge, we’ve been working a lot on out-rebounding them on the offensive boards, and focusing on our talking and having our hands up,” said Lucas Peterson, who scored 13 in the win, said “I’ve seen a lot of improvement in the last couple weeks.”

The Grizzlies were led by Ryan Strandin with 16 points, followed by Leuenberger’s season-high 14.

With three league games left, the Grizzlies boys have mathematically secured the No. 1 seed for Tri-District tournament and seem a lock to return to the state tournament, where they placed fifth in 2010.

“It’s been fun to see us keep getting better and better, the guys are enjoying themselves and have a great attitude,” Moe said. “We’re just going to enjoy every step of the way… we don’t know how (far) it will take us. There are some good teams out there, so we’re going to just keep plugging away and working hard.”

The Grizzlies play again tonight against Evergreen Lutheran at home, tipoff scheduled for 8 p.m.