No. 2-ranked Minster beats St. Marys in non-league girls basketball action.
The second quarter made the difference.
Minster and St. Marys were 37-35 in quarters one, three and four but the Wildcats doubled up the Roughriders in the second quarter to help them come out with a 55-44 non-conference girls basketball win on Monday.
The win marks Minster’s 13th straight while the loss snaps the Roughriders’ sixgame win streak, but despite Minster’s second-quarter scoring, the Roughriders fought throughout.
“We had too many mental errors tonight defensively guarding people,” Wildcats coach Mike Wiss said. “They didn’t so anything differently on our scouting report … mentally, I don’t think we were locked in tonight defensively.” Leading 17-14 after the opening quarter, the Wildcats scored on their first seven possessions of the second quarter as part of a 120, 14-2 overall. The Wildcats came out attacking the basket as Ella Mescher and Ivy Wolf were each sent to the free-throw line after drawing fouls when they drove to the basket. Mescher went 2-of-2 to make it 19-14 and after a Kendall Dieringer jumper, Wolf 4-of-4 to push the Minster lead to 23-16.
Janae Hoying drove to the basket for a bucket and Mescher turned a St. Marys’ turnover into two points to extend the Minster lead to 27-16. Offensive rebounding turned two missed shots into four points for the Wildcats in their next two possessions, one by Wolf and the other by Dana Prenger, to conclude Minster’s 12-0 run, which culminated in a 31-16 lead.
St. Marys, however, hung on as Dieringer’s two free throws thwarted Minster’s run and a Dieringer feed to Noey Ruane pulled the Riders within 11 with 3:21 left to play in the first half. Dieringer found Ruane again as the junior sunk a 3-pointer to close the gap to 10 with 1:21 left until Wolf’s jumper with 41.3 seconds made it a 12-point game at the half.
But St. Marys kept Minster’s within reach in the third.
While Minster shot 1-of-9 from the floor and committed three turnovers through the first 12 possessions, St. Marys rallied with a Dieringer bucket and foul and a free throw by the junior point guard as part of a 4-0 run to close in, 35-27 with 5:21 left in the third quarter.
“They wanted to keep fighting back and a lot of that is our defense,” Burke said. “When our offense isn’t going, the best thing you can do is buckle up and play as hard defense as you can to try to get some momentum your way and get out in transition. And we were able to do that a little bit later.”
The Roughriders kept the game within nine before Minster closed out the quarter with a 7-3 advantage on 3-of-4 shooting to go up 13 entering the fourth quarter as the Wildcats led by as much as 20 in the final stanza despite St. Marys closing the game to within 10 on a Karsyn McGlothen layup with 1:01 left to play in regulation
“They’re very disruptive on defense and we couldn’t run our sets so we were just speeding out and running,” Burke said. “So I’m proud go our girls. They handled that because we really haven’t seen a defense like — O-G is probably the closest thing and I thought we handled Minster’s defense better than we handled O-G earlier in the year.”
Mescher led the Wildcats with 11 points, followed by Wolf with 10. Hoying added six points.
“This is a team that can score easily and Hoying and Wolf can obviously put points on the board but I was impressed with our defensive effort on them,” Burke added. “I was really impressed with our post defense. Minster’s got very good post presence and I thought Minster could have pounded the ball inside on us all night and I thought we handled them really well on the inside.”
The Roughriders has three finish with double digit points, led by Dieringer’s 16, followed by Menker’s three 3-pointers to finish with 11 points and Ruane with 11 points.
“You’re going to get everybody’s best shot, which St. Marys give you a good one,” Wiss said. “They are physical, they’ve got nice guards, they’ve got a big in the middle.” Minster needs to be locked on all the time and that’s on me, I need to do a better job.”
Minster also won the junior varsity game 48-35 led by Kaycie Albers with 11 points. Morgan Hesse led the Riders with 12 points.
The Roughriders will travel on Thursday to take on Elida while Minster will travel to St. Henry.