The Pine City girls basketball team suffered their first loss of the season 61-48 to St. Cloud Cathedral, a team that was in last year's Section Championship game.
From Head Coach Ted Hasz:
Pine City 68
Hinckley/Finlayson 35
For the second time this month the Dragons played the Jaguars and for the second time the Dragons came away with the conference victory. Although the Dragons did not shoot the ball as well this time around, they played solid defense and were able to limit their turnovers to 12 while forcing 25 Jaguar turnovers. The Dragons had 3 players in double figures with Ellie Hasz scoring 21, Lily Wilson with 16 and Hannah Lorsung with 12. Jolie Wicktor and Chloe Alleman each had 6 points. Alaina Steele 5 points and Sophie Lahti had 2. The Dragons dished out 15 assists in the contest with Wilson tallying 7 and Alaina Steele 5. Lorsung had 9 rebounds, Sophie Lahti had 8, Ashley Faur had 7 and Chloe Alleman had 6.
It was a very good team effort.
St. Cloud Cathedral 61
Pine City 48
The Dragons suffered their first loss of the season to the Crusaders who were in the section championship last season and return 4 starters from that team. We don't feel that we had our best outing but we are very encouraged about what we can accomplish after facing Cathedral.
As we have said all season, daily improvement will get us where we need to be. Playing some stiffer competition was something that we really needed. It should help us prepare for some tough games coming up.
We had a couple of lapses in the game and that was the difference. In reality we if we play a few possessions a little better, we have a chance to win the game. The Dragons shot an uncharacteristically low 25% from the field. Give Cathedral credit for good defense, but some of that was us rushing a bit for whatever reason. Ellie Hasz and Lily Wilson had 17 and 13 points respectively, Ashley Faur had 6 points, Hannah Lorsung and Chloe Alleman had 4 points each. Alaina Steele had three points and Emily Carpenter had 1.
We are very excited about our upcoming schedule where we face some AAA teams and some other solid AA programs. It will be a good test for us and show us what we need to be better at before the playoffs role around.
Photo credit: Lancelot Furber
