Flathead girls drill Polson
With every pass the Polson Lady Pirates made there was a host of orange black suffocating the ball. The Flathead Bravettes turned up the defensive pressure on Friday night, pressing, trapping and forcing 10 steals in a 50-21 nonconference basketball home victory.
“We got to clean up some stuff and work on a lot of different things tonight,” Bravettes head coach Lisa Hendrickson said.
“It’s all about getting better, working on what we have, putting in some new things and seeing what our identity is. We don’t really know what our identity is so we wanted to try some new defenses to see what they look like and they did really well.”
The Bravettes (2-3) held Polson to just one field goal in the first quarter, jumping out to a 13-2 lead. Polson’s Skyla Krantz scored the Lady Pirates’ first bucket of the night with 1:28 to play in the opening period, but Bravettes senior guard Lauren Clark answered with a 3-pointer on the next possession and Flathead asserted its dominance from the opening tip.
Clark had the hot hand early for Flathead, draining two treys in the first half. She finished with nine points.
“It was nice to see some girls get some confidence tonight. She’s new to the school and was a little timid at first, but now I think she’s starting to come into her own and it was nice to see her hitting some big 3s,” Hendrickson said.
Flathead led 23-9 at halftime and hardly let up in the third quarter. Again, the Bravettes held Polson to just a single field goal in the third, navigating an 18-2 run that lasted the entire period.
While the defense was forcing turnovers, the offense stayed hot throughout the game. Jessica Simmons scored six points on two consecutive possessions in the third. The senior’s layup fell through the twine as she was fouled and she converted the three-point play before nailing a 3-pointer the next trip down the court. She finished with a game-high 10 points as did teammate Kelsey Gillespie. Gillespie was 4 for 6 from the field, sinking her only 3-point attempt in the fourth quarter.
Flathead also got a big night from sophomore post Taryn Gutierez. Gutierez added nine points, scoring four points in the first quarter and five in the third.
The Lady Pirates (0-3) were plagued by a poor shooting performance and never really got their offense going as they dealt with Flathead’s pressure all night.
Polson shot 18 percent from the field and was 0 for 10 from behind the arc.
“We didn’t perform well at all. We’ve played better than that,” Polson head coach Jay Krantz said.
“I think we can be a really good defensive team, but it always helps when you score. We had some letdowns defensively and we weren’t scoring. We had opportunities to score. We had some good sets and missed some bunnies and that hurt our defensive performance.”
Nichole Lake led the Lady Pirates with six points and nine rebounds, scoring all of her baskets in the fourth quarter.
“Obviously we want to win as many games as we can, but we just want to get better and better heading into tournament time,” Krantz said.
“Our league is going to be very tight. It’s going to be a scramble for that second spot. Hopefully, we’ll perform better at divisionals like we did last year and not put too much pressure on ourselves in these early ones.”
Polson 2 7 2 10 — 21
Flathead 13 10 18 9 — 50
POLSON — Skyla Krantz 0-6 3-5 3, Marlee Congdon 1-6 0-0 2, Lauren Lefthand 1-6 2-2 4, Nichole Lake 2-7 2-4 6, Erin Sampson 1-3 0-2 2, Peyton Anderson 2-4 0-0 4. Totals — 6-32 6-13 21
FLATHEAD — Kylee Meredith 1-2 0-0 2, Janae Moon 1-1 1-1 3, Stephanie Wilson 1-5, 0-0 2, Kelsey Gillespie 4-6 1-1 10, Cadelyn Nunn 1-3 0-0 2, Sierra Siblerud 0-1 1-2 1, Lauren Clark 3-5 1-4 9, Tiana Johnson 1-7 0-2 2, Jessica Simmons 3-4 3-5 10, Taryn Gutierez 4-7 1-3 9. Totals — 19-41 8-18 50.
3 point goals — Polson 0-10, Flathead 4-13 (Clark 2-3, Simmons 1-2, Gillespie 1-1). Rebounds — Polson 11 (Lake 9), Flathead 23 (Simmons 4). Steals — Polson 1 (Lefthand), Flathead 10 (Gillespie 3).