Lady Devils topple Storm
Comments (...)SPRING VALLEY — Hall hosted Bureau Valley Monday night in 2A regional action defeating the Storm 44-25.
The Lady Devils junior guard Kaylee Golden led the game in scoring with 15 points. Teammate Emily Hoscheid added an 11-point performance. The Storm’s Heaven Bennett was their highest scorer with eight points.
“Finally we had more field goals than turnovers in the first half. The second half, we gave up on our press because they were breaking it. Our half-court man-to-man was good. Those were the keys to winning the game. I thought we had some trouble rebounding, but the girls did a really good job against their big lineup,” Hall coach Mike Struna said.
Regarding the improvement in free-throw shooting from last Friday’s performance Struna added, “We were 9 of 14 compared to 5 of 21 the other night. We’ve shot a few of them since then.”
The first half was big for Hall with Golden garnering six points in the first quarter and five in the second. Hall was up 14-7 going into the second. That’s when Hoscheid put up the biggest single quarter of the game with eight points.
The Storm had plenty of opportunities, sometimes getting a third and fourth chance for a put back as their height allowed them to be tough on the offensive glass. Unfortunately, for the Storm, the ball didn’t make it in the basket very often.
At halftime, the Lady Red Devils were up 31-16. Hall's hot shooting in the wake of a tough loss Friday night was overwhelming for the Storm.
Not much happened for either team in the second half. The Lady Devils' offense slowed down to the pace of Bureau Valley's with the teams combining for 21 total second-half points.
Regarding the game and the season, Storm coach Tiffany Gonigam said she told her team she'd be glad to start the season all over again with the progress they made, despite a 1-26 finish.
"I think we’ve come along since the beginning and we feel like where we are right now is a place where we are just getting started," she said. "There’s no doubt in everybody’s mind that we were rebuilding this year. We were coming off, basically, the same kind of season last year and we had a lot of the same players. We laid the foundation for what Bureau Valley will be in the future. There were times tonight when I looked out on the floor we had four sophomores playing. That’s just where we are at right now."
Gonigam was most impressed how the storm handled Hall's press.
"If you would have told me that we would break the press like we did tonight, I would have told you we won the game," she said. "But, we had a lot of live ball turnovers in the half court that they converted into points, and you can’t take that away from them. Hall played a great game. The girls executed everything we asked them to. There were just things that happened we weren’t prepared for. They’ve come in every day this season and listened and learned. That’s all we can ask.”
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