When Betsy Kingma gets into the zone, her Newport teammates know what to do.

They set screens. They open things up. They feed her the ball. They let her go.

“We all know she’s the shooter on this team,” said Newport senior Caitlin Bennett. “If we can get her open, that’s what we do. We let her loose when she’s hot.”

In Saturday night’s loser-out, winner-to-state game against Skyview of Vancouver, Kingma got hot in the second half, hitting shot after shot and leading the Knights to a second straight state berth with a 67-44 win over the Storm.

Kingma, a senior who has signed with Seattle Pacific University, scored only three points in the first half but poured in 27 in the second as the Knights (19-5) turned an eight point lead into an insurmountable task for the Storm of the Greater St. Helen’s League.

Kingma hit three three-pointers in the third quarter and four in the third. Her 30 points were a game-high.

“It’s just a confidence that I haven’t had in awhile,” she said. “Things started to fall that weren’t falling in the first half. But it was really a great team effort – there were some screens set up for me that those Skyview girls are going to feel in the morning.”

Newport, which was forced to play tonight after losing to Garfield 48-41 in the KingCo 4A championship game Friday, shot lights out from behind the three-point line. The Knights were 7 of 14 from three-point range in the first half and 8 of 16 in the second.

“We came out very confident because of yesterday,” said Bennett, who added 16 points for the Knights. “We had a lot of jitters yesterday and tonight we just put it all in the past.”

Newport had to battle a big size discrepancy as well. The Storm sported four players at 6-foot, one at 5-11 and two others at 5-10, while the Knights boast only two players taller than 5-9. Despite their clear size advantage, Skyview (16-7) were never able to get going inside.

“Who we are was going to cause them problems as much as how they were was going to cause us problems,” said Newport coach Travis Whitaker. “The first quarter we came out like gangbusters. We were wearing them down with the pressure.”

Newport forced the Storm to commit 22 turnovers in the game. Larissa Hamilton led Skyview with 10 points while Katie Swanson added eight.

Newport will find out its opening-round opponent tomorrow for the state tournament in Tacoma.

“The big thing for these girls is that the whole time, state has been what they wanted,” Whitaker said. “None of that other stuff mattered this year. Making it to state was everything to us.”

“We feel we still have some goals,” Kingma said. “This was the first step in getting there and we can put a check in that box.”