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Ladies wrap it up

By
Sonja Karp, NLJ Sports Editor

Lady Dogies improve to 2-0 in quadrant
 
The Lady Dogie hoopsters wrapped up their first run through quadrant play last weekend with a big win over the Glenrock Lady Herders on Friday in the Dogie Dome. Though the score differential wasn’t significant, the 42-37 victory was important to secure the second seed in the northeast region. 
 
On Saturday, head coach Mike Pederson’s crew traveled to Wheatland to face off against a tough Lady Bulldogs team, and this time, they didn’t fare as well, dropping the contest, 32-73.
 
“Beating Glenrock was a huge win for us in the quad,” Pederson said. “We have to make sure we win those games to stay where we want to be heading into regionals.”
 
The Lady Dogies started the game on Friday strong, jumping out to an 18-4 lead at the end of the first quarter. However, the remaining three quarters of the contest ended with the Lady Herders out-scoring Newcastle. Fortunately, the 14-point lead they established in the first quarter of play was enough to hold Glenrock off.
 
“After the first quarter, we kind of dropped off our sense of urgency again,” Pederson admitted. “We need to learn to play with that first quarter mentality for all four quarters of the game, because we can’t be content to be up just by 14.”
 
In the second quarter, Glenrock began to turn things around and they closed the gap to only a nine-point deficit as the teams headed into the locker room.
 
“We can also learn from our mistakes and understand that being down isn’t the end of the world,” Pederson said. “Teams will more than likely start to crack if you can get up by 20, but if you let them hang around, they can come back and hurt you.”
 
The Lady Herders nearly did that as they out-scored the Lady Dogies in the second half, pulling within two points in the fourth quarter. The Lady Dogies were able to answer their run, however, to pull out the win by the time the final buzzer sounded.  
 
“Our trend has been that we don’t finish well,” Pederson said. “We need to balance our scoring a little better, because right now we have just a couple of girls who are putting significant points on the board and we seem to only be doing that early in the game.”
 
Jayde Harrington led her team with a double-double, scoring 15 points and pulling down 10 rebounds. Syd Pederson dropped in 11 points, Delainey Dresen had 9, Adalyn Olson added 5 while Christine Swentesky chipped in 2 points to round out the scoring. 
 
Securing the quadrant win against Glenrock was comforting as the Lady Dogies headed to Wheatland to take on the Lady Bulldogs in a cross-quadrant match-up on Saturday. The Bulldogs were coming off a loss to Douglas on Friday, but that loss was only by 18 points, which is impressive against the Lady Bearcats.
 
Once again, Newcastle opened up the contest strong and traded the lead back and forth with Wheatland. For seven minutes of the contest, the Lady Dogies had the Lady Bulldogs a little on their heels, but then Wheatland gathered themselves and began to give everyone observing proof that they are a team to be reckoned with.
 
“We played seven minutes of the kind of basketball we need to play,” Pederson said. “But then it was reminiscent of the Glenrock game where we started strong and then we just let off.”
 
Once again, the Lady Dogies scored 18 points in the first quarter, but from there they were only able to muster six points in the second, and four points each in the third and fourth quarters of play.  
 
“Being down 11 at the end of the first isn’t terrible, but not being able to keep that up isn’t going to bode well for us,” Pederson said. “We were nonexistent in the second, third and fourth quarters. It happened so fast and I think we were just caught like deer in the headlights against their defense.” 
 
Harrington led her team again with 16 points, Pederson was next with 13, Brooklyn Benshoof added 2 points while Dresen chipped in 1 for Newcastle
 
This week, the Lady Dogies will host the Rawlins Lady Outlaws on Friday to wrap up their first round of 3A East competition Games are scheduled early, starting at 2:30 with the junior varsity games, and varsity tipping off at 4 p.m.

 

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