Ladies take down the Outlaws

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter 
 
Winning wasn’t enough for the Lady Dogies last Saturday in Rawlins. Why not spot the Lady Outlaws 15 points to give yourself a challenge? Head Coach Chad Ostenson’s squad replied: Challenge accepted!
After a long trip to Carbon County, the Lady Dogies crawled off the bus ready to take on a tough Rawlins team but they were just a little slow to get their motors running. After the first quarter of play plagued with turnovers and being just off the mark on the offensive side of the game, Newcastle went to the bench with a 4-19 deficit.
From that point on, however, Newcastle outscored the Lady Outlaws in every quarter, including overtime, to take the 47-44 win.
“It’s always fun to get a win in Rawlins because it isn’t an easy thing to do,” Ostenson smiled. “It also shows what kind of kids we have, and it shows what we can do. They may get down but they always make a run at it and come back.”
The battle to get back in the game commenced in quarter two as the squad found 6-foot, 2-inch Tiernan Stanton who established her rhythm under the basket and was instrumental in leading the Lady Dogies on a 14-2 run to pull within three by the end of the first half.
“We’re starting to find and use our posts more, which is nice, especially when our outside game isn’t on like we want it to be,” Ostenson nodded. “Tiernan did a really nice job in that second quarter of finishing when we got her the ball and that was huge for us in getting us going.”
The third quarter has been a questionable one for Newcastle so far this season, but the squad came out of the locker room pretty strong. Unfortunately, the Lady Outlaws started to gain momentum, going on a 10-
point run.
“When they started to pull away from us again, I wondered if that would be it for us,” Ostenson admitted. “I also know that you can never count this team out, but we needed to find an offensive answer.”
The answer came from an unexpected, but very welcome, place. Sophomore MacKenzie Conzelman came in off the bench and hit two back-to-back threes which lit a spark for her squad and turned that third quarter around to where the Lady Dogies once again outscored the Lady Outlaws to draw within two points.
“Mack had a really solid game and it was the best varsity game she’s played. She really stepped up and had some big moments,” Ostenson nodded. “Besides hitting three from beyond the arc, she also hit a couple of really big free-throws down the stretch which were really key.”
In the final frame of regulation, the Lady Dogies held a three point lead with just seconds to play when they sent a Lady Outlaw to the charity stripe. Though she missed both attempts, Rawlins came down with the rebound and kicked it out to their best player who nailed the three at the buzzer to tie things up and push the game into overtime.
Lady luck smiled on Newcastle, however, as that same player fouled out early in OT, and while free throw shooting wasn’t perfect by the Lady Dogies, it was good enough to build back a three point lead which they were able to maintain at the final buzzer.
“We’ve played some pretty tight games that didn’t really seem tight,” Ostenson chuckled. “This team has a way about them where they just keep going, and each quarter after the first we kept chipping away and getting closer.”
Ostenson was also pleased to see more balanced scoring from his team. Jaylen Ostenson was once again the squad’s leading scorer, finishing with 17 points, but Conzelman and Stanton also joined her with double figures scoring 12 and 10 respectively.
The big win was timely for the Lady Dogies as they are tasked with hosting two quadrant games this week against teams that are on a bit of a roll right now. Thermopolis is coming to town on Friday with an early start at 3 for junior varsity action, and Buffalo is up on Saturday with the JV game tipping off at 1 p.m.