Sports

Stars struggle over holiday break

By Tyler Ohmann

01/03/2012

With two starters on vacation the Bottineau Stars had to do their best with a couple younger players thrust into some major roles over the holiday break.

“The good side of that is that those younger kids got a lot of playing time and hopefully that helps us in the long run,” Forsberg said. “It definitely makes a difference, and becomes frustrating for the kids that are here, because they want to win just like everybody else and leaving yourself shorthanded is tough.”

Unfortunately for the Stars that meant a couple tough losses, first a 53-31 loss to North Star on Tuesday followed by a 50-46 squeaker loss to Watford City.

The 22-point loss to the Bearcats came on the heels of a victory over Our Redeemer’s in the Stars previous game.

The Bearcats came out red hot scoring 18 in the first quarter and leading 31-13 by halftime. In the second they continued to add to their lead, eventually drowning the Stars to th tune of 53-31.

Alexandera Heisler led the Bearcats with 18 points. Two other Bearcats were in double figures.

Bottineau was led by senior Heidi Artz who had nine points. Freshman Whitney Brandvold had eight points in her first varsity action this season.

Thursday was a better story for the Stars, but with the same result — a loss.

The Stars and the Watford City Wolves traded blows with several ties and lead changes throughout the game.

The Wolves took a four-point lead entering the final quarter. There Forsberg believes the Stars played their best defense of the night.

“I was dissappointed in our defense for three quarters and in the fourth quarter I felt like we did a nice job,” Forsberg said. “We had a couple breakdowns and we talked about it afterwards. We didn’t box out a couple times, but other than that we played some basketball in the fourth quarter.”

Eventually Watford City broke away at the very end of the game with a couple key buckets and took home a 50-46 win.

“At the end we when we were trying to run some execution, (there were) kids not really understanding where they were supposed to be as far as setting screens,” Forsberg said. “That really hurt us, because it took too much time off the clock.”

Katryna Hahn (20) and Danielle McDonald (13) combined for 33 of Bottineau’s 46 points, and McKenzie Jensen added eight in the loss.

Senior point guard McKayla Haugeberg had 19 to lead the Wolves to the win.

Forsberg liked the comeback effort, but thinks if they would have cleaned things up a bit in the final minutes the result could have been a win.

“I like the way we came back, not dissappointed in that at all,” Forsberg said. “But taking care of just a couple little things on the defensive end and execution in the offense the last couple minutes would have really made a difference.”

The start to the season that Forsberg envisioned isn’t quite where he would like, but he is interested to see what the future brings.

The Stars will begin that future with a game at 7:30 p.m. tonight against Mohall-Lansford-Sherwood in Bottineau.

“I really believe we should be 4-1 heading into that MLS game,” Forsberg said. “But instead we are 2-3 and trying to regroup, so we’ll find out what next week brings.”

Notes:

The sophomore McDonald turned an ankle in practice and didn’t play in the game against North Star. Her return against Watford City was her first action in about 10 days according to Forsberg. Forsberg admitted that minus that practice time McDonald was a bit fatigued, which he believes may have contributed to her fouling out of the game.