Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
Eastern Adams County's Only Independent Voice Since 1887
Lind-Ritzville/Sprague's Janaye Wilkie keeps her eyes on the basket in the Lady Broncos' 60-55 road loss to Connell on Dec. 28. LRS bounced back two days later to beat Almira/Coulee-Hartline 53-38 in another non-league road game.
The Lind-Ritzville/Sprague girls basketball split a pair of non-league games with a loss at Connell on Friday and a win at Almira-Coulee-Hartline on Monday.
LRS head coach Steve Wellsandt knew his player would have their work cut out for them when they traveled to play Connell–an undefeated 1A school– on Saturday. Despite losing 60-55, and despite playing with starting post Dakota Killian, Wellsandt liked the fight he saw out of his girls.
"I really felt the girls competed well tonight and played together well," Wellsandt said. "If we play like that, we are going to be fine."
The Lady Broncos came back from large deficits twice in the game. Connell used several fast breaks to jump out to a 11-2 lead. Wellsandt said he told his team if they could make Connell play half-court basketball, they would be OK.
He was right. After slowing Connell's fast break, the Lady Broncos were able to claw their way back into the contest and actually go up by one shortly before halftime. Connell answered back and went into halftime with a 29-27 lead.
Things got out of hand again for the Lady Broncos in the second half as Connell once again was able to speed up the pace of the game. Linnea Schafer seemed to grab some momentum back for LRS when she appeared to have a basket while drawing a foul, but she was called for traveling instead.
Connell extended its lead to 14 points in the fourth quarter, but LRS, led by Schafer, stormed back to within six with three minutes remaining. With one minute remaining Janaye Wilkie stole the ball and got fouled hard driving to the basket down 59-53. She made both free throws to make it 59-55.
Connell would get fouled on the other end and made a free throw to close out the game 60-55.
"We had a couple opportunities down the stretch but the ball didn't fall our way," Wellsandt said. "We did some really good things tonight. We tried some things we haven't done yet and we got something out if it. Overall, I was really happy with how the kids kept fighting to the end. They didn't give up."
LRS followed the loss with a 53-38 victory over Almira-Coulee-Hartline. Elzia Galbreath led the Broncos with 20 points in the non-league win.
Reader Comments(0)