The Sting girls have been working on starting strong in the games. They came to this game ready. They scored an early lead and had great defense. MACCRAY didn’t score for the first 10 minutes. Madison Hinz scored a lot early. Meeghen Dahlager had great breakaways. YME did a good job of moving the ball around. The halftime score was 51-25 in YME’s favor.
During the second half, the Sting kept the pressure on, while digging deeper into the roster to let more players get valuable varsity experience. The score crept up to a 40-point lead. The rule in high school is after 35 points it becomes a running clock with nine minutes left. The final score was a Sting victory 84-41.
Hinz not only scored 25 points, ended up going seven for seven in 3-point shots. This ties the State record, and also makes her the seventh player in MSHSL history to finish 100% beyond the arch (you need a minimum of six to count) Two other players have finished seven for seven, Hinz has joined that list.
After Tuesday’s game, the Sting were frustrated with their defensive performance. They felt letting MACCRAY score 25 in the first half was too much. They wanted to hold MACCRAY under 50, Coach Haakenson also reported that a number of girls worked on their skills a lot over the Christmas vacation, and was happy to get them a chance to have more varsity playtime.
“We feel we have a very good team, truthfully I’m not very happy with where we are record-wise. We’re 7-4. Some of the games we lost, we allowed teams to dictate the pace. If we fast break and transition and score and force them to play our game, then we feel like we won."
YME vs MACCRAY Halftime Score: YME-51 MACCRAY-25 Final Score: YME-84 MACCRAY-41
YME Scoring: Madi Hinz-25; Hannah Gullickson-13; Kenzie Dyrdahl-12; Sam Anderson-10; Meeghen Dahlager-8
YME Rebounding: Madi-8; Sam-6; Hannah-5 YME Assists: Kaitlyn Mortenson-6; Madi-5
YME Steals: Meeghen-5; Madi-3
YME Blocks: Hannah-3
MACCRAY Scoring: Piper Asche-9; Olivia Ruiter-8; Kate Hultgren-7
YME vs Montevideo
The Sting girls have had a hectic schedule, and had a third game for that week, on Friday night. This time they played their rival, Montevideo. YME started with an aggressive full court press, shutting down Montevideo fairly well. Montevideo caught up partway through the half, but the Sting pulled ahead again and finished the half 41-27.
For most of the second half, the YME kept around a 20-point lead. The scores gradually climbed. With five minutes left the Sting had a comfortable lead 64-40, and finished 64-47. Coach Haakenson reported that he “may have been a bit tough on the girls. Having a third game in one week can give some ‘very heavy legs’...but the bottom line is we got out of here with a win. We’re tired, beat up, wore out, but next week we got three more, so we’ll strap them on and go again."
“...When you look at the past four years I think we’ve given up a lot more points than we should have. We have a lot of athleticism, and when you have that level it should probably translate to a little better defense. I think we do a good job at transitions, maybe we don’t hang on to the ball as well as we should. But I’m never really concerned about us scoring. If we can learn to play defense and give up fewer points we don’t have to score as much.”