The GHS Lady Dragons faced up against the Beresford Watchdogs on February 11 in a doubleheader. After a nailbiting final quarter, the Blue Dragons found themselves down and out with a final score of 49-50, despite a successful last second play that delivered.
Coach Matt Schrank was pleased with the final shot, despite the loss.
“Well, last week we played Beresford in a rematch from the 3rd place game on the conference tournament. We won the first contest by 9, and felt pretty good about the matchup going into it. We started the game down 0-14 in the 1st quarter. We got plenty of great shots off, but didn’t make any.
“After a 5-16 1st quarter, we made a few offensive adjustments that helped us close the gap. By halftime we were down 16-22. We switched up our defensive heading into the 2nd half and it paid dividends early on, as we outscored them 16-7 in the 3rd quarter and led 32-29 after 3 quarters. The 4th quarter, both teams started to heat up, we were making shots from the outside, but they were getting to the foul line. They shot 8 free throws compared to our zero, and the game was tied with 35 seconds to go. We turned over the in-bounds pass and they went coast to coast for the lay-up to go up by 2. We had a chance to win it with a 3 in the corner that missed and then we fouled with 9 seconds to go, and were down by 2 points. They made both free throws and we made a last second 3 pointer to lose the game by 1 point.”
Lizzie Olson led in scoring with 16 points, Jaelyn Benson had 11, and Lauren Heesch had 8 points. Lizzie also had 14 rebounds to pace the Lady Dragons. Jaelyn also had 5 assists and Peyton Hove had 4.
The Blue Dragons again had a double header on Tuesday against Parker (results not available at press time) and will play at Sioux Valley tonight (Thursday). The final home game of the season will be against rival Baltic on Tuesday, February 25 at 6:15 p.m.
