The Wrangell girls’ basketball team racked up a single win and two losses in Ketchikan this weekend at the Clarke Cochrane Holiday Classic.
“The tournament went well for a lot of my players,” said head coach Edna Abella-Nore. “For every girl except one, none of them had played at a big tournament before. There was a lot of nerves.”
The tournament opened Friday with a lopsided 53-11 loss to Chugiak. The team scored a single point through two quarters then added eight more in the third, including a 3-pointer by Wrangell baller Kaydee Howell and a field goal and two free-throws from Darian Meissner. Howell sank two free-throws in the fourth to tie Meissner atop the Lady Wolves’ scorers with five points apiece.
The Lady Mustangs would more than answer, scoring 15 points in the second quarter alone to seal a 32-1 lead at the half. Hannah Russel led the Lady Mustangs with 12 points, followed closely by Brandy Bookout with 10.
The score arose from a bit of a divisional mismatch, Abella-Nore said.
“Chugiak is a 4A school,” she said. “They have a great ball club. When you’re in a 2A school, this is talent you don’t really see that often. You could tell these girls have been playing since they were eight together.”
The Wrangell squad fared better against Craig Saturday.
Marsha McCay, who scored the single first-half Wolves point Friday from the line, led the Lady Wolves’ offense with 6 points from the field. McCay also shot four-for-seven from the line.
Meissner scored three from inside the arc, and added a single point from the line for 7 total.
Craig boasted two players with double-digit scoring totals, and led each quarter to the locker room with a 40-26 Lady Panther victory.
“Craig is a great ball club,” Abella-Nore said. “The big factor in that game: if all my girls had made their free-throws, we would have lost by only one point.”
The team collectively shot 8-for-23 from the line Saturday.
The Lady Wolves recorded the only Wrangell win of the tournament Sunday night against conference rivals Klawock.
“I think the girls really came through,” Abella-Nore said. “After our loss to Craig, I told them ‘You have to come into every game wanting to win.’ They went in that morning and they were determined to win. They were talking a lot more on defense, and attacking the basket as hard as they possibly could.”
Victory was never in doubt. The Lady Wolves led 21-8 at halftime, and tacked on 18 points in the second half to seal a 39-28 win. Senior Erica Smith overcame two games of scoreboard shyness to lead the Wrangell offense with nine points, six points scored from the field and three from the line. Kaydee Howell, Marsha McCay, and Taylor Bean each added six points – with Howell sinking another 3-pointer – and the Lady Wolves avoided last place.
Every red jersey on the court tallied a field goal.
“Everyone on the team scored a basket,” Abella-Nore said. “That’s what I want from them.”
More significant than the fact that the Wolves beat last place is the fact that the Lady Wolves managed to improve offensively over the course of the tournament.
At first, the team was “a little shy and intimidated,” Abella-Nore said. “What they realized as the tournament went on is that when they do attack the basket, they get to shoot free-throws.”
“The big thing was making our baskets,” she added.
The Lady Wolves will spend the next two weeks prepping for a tough defense against regional rivals Petersburg, Abella-Nore said.
“Something we need to work on: I know Petersburg runs a full-court press,” she said. “We just gotta make sure we convert those rebounds into points and be really good on the free-throw line.”
The Lady Wolves will play their annual alumni game 6 p.m. Friday in the High School gym. All alumni are welcome.
The Lady Wolves visit Petersburg Jan. 10 and 11 for their homecoming.
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