Ponca girls top Wynot for L&C Tourney title
HARTINGTON — The Lady Blue Devils lost 54-38 in the Girls Lewis & Clark Conference Basketball Championship to top seed Ponca on Monday night.
With both teams playing full court defenses throughout the night, foul trouble came into play in the first half for Wynot when Noelle Wi- eseler registered three and Katelyn Heine picked up two of the team’s 12 fouls.
Ponca found the edge in the first half by service of the free throw line.
The Lady Indians went 11-12 in the first half and finished 22-27 from the charity stripe, while the Lady Blue Devils went 10-13 from the line on the night.
“I think they made 12 more free throws than we did and we just put them at the line too much,” said Wynot head coach Steve Wieseler. “It seemed like there was a lot of pushing and shoving inside and we didn’t do a good enough job of keeping them off the foul line.”
Wynot went 4-6 from the line in the first half.
Both teams struggled for field goals early, with each team settling for six two-pointers in the first half.
Ponca’s Kaci Day established her rhythm in the second quarter, grabbing seven of her 11 first-half points.
Day had the game-high 21 points on the night, scoring eight points in the fourth quarter to help seal the win for Ponca.
The game came just two days after Wynot played in a grueling double-overtime semifinal game against Hartington-Newcastle. With the
day off on Sunday though, Wieseler said he did not feel that the girls were overly tired from Saturday.
Both Ponca and Wynot prefer to play a physical game, with neither team converting on a three-point shot attempt.
“We got beat up and pushed around quite a bit,” said Wieseler. “They are a little bigger than us but we didn’t really respond to that either.”
The Wynot coach continued by saying, “They are a physical team. That is the way we like to play but we didn’t play it.”
The loss for Wynot earned the team a runner-up finish in the L&C Conference Tournament and dropped the team’s record to 12-5 on the year.
Wynot jumped right into a busy week following Monday’s loss. The Lady Blue Devils traveled to Pierce on Tuesday, hosted Pender on Thurs- day, and traveled to face Hartington-Newcastle on Friday.
The girls then start Subdistrict competition on Monday back in the Msgr. Werner Activity Center at Cedar Catholic in Hartington. Wynot is in a ve team bracket with Bloom eld, Emer- son-Hubbard, Santee, and Winside. The winner of the Subdistrict bracket advances to a District
Wynot 9 7 14 8 —38
Ponca 1013 12 19 — 54
SCORING Wynot - Kaitlyn Heimes, 11; Karley Heimes, 8; Katelyn Heine, 8; Shaelee Planer, 7; Autumn Lawson, 2; Edyn Sudbeck, 2. Ponca - Kaci Day, 21; Taylor Lamprecht, 12; Grace Salmen, 8; Bree Gill, 6; Alyssa Crosgrove, 2; Maggie McGill, 2; Sydni Hughes, 2; Kortney Fethkenher, 1.
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