Lady Dogies beat the Buffalo Bison

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter 
 
With time running short before Regionals, the Lady Dogies had a big weekend of quadrant play, the outcome of which could solidify seeding for the tournament. 
A month ago, the squad picked up a solid win over the Lady Bobcats of Thermopolis, but lost to the Buffalo Lady Bison by ten points. As they prepared to take on these two teams for the second time around last Friday and Saturday, head coach Chad Ostenson was hoping to nab another W in Thermopolis, and turn the tables on Buffalo at home.
Unfortunately, the Lady Dogies struggled to get going after traveling over the mountain on Friday, and at one point dug themselves a 17-point hole against the Lady Bobcats from which they just couldn’t climb out.
“It was disappointing to say the least,” Ostenson frowned. “We fought our way back, and got within two points, but having to foul at the end pushed the Lady Bobcat’s lead to six before time ran out.” 
Too many unforced turnovers, and a lack of fundamentals plagued the team throughout the contest, and contributed to the 43-49 loss.
It was a bit of a step backward from how we’ve been progressing lately,” Ostenson admitted. “We weren’t taking care of the ball and we were making the mistakes we did before Christmas.”
To add to the squad’s struggle, none of the shooters were having success other than Ally Cass, who finished the night leading her team with 15 points. Jaylen Ostenson ended with a double double, scoring 10 points and pulling down 11 rebounds. MacKenzie Conzelman added six points, Shelby Tidyman had five, Shawnee Miles chipped in four and Mercedes Voelker rounded out the scoring with two points. 
The loss was a blow to the Lady Dogies’ current standings in the seedings as it gave Thermopolis the opportunity to tie their conference record. That made the outcome of Saturday’s contest against Buffalo much more important. The Lady Bison got a 37-27 win against Newcastle when the two met in January, so the Lady Dogies needed a win this time around.
Once again, the squad had a bit of a slow start as Buffalo jumped out to a five point lead early in the contest. Ostenson was able to rally his squad with a quick time out, however, and from then on, Newcastle dominated the Johnson County team.
“It was just a really fun game,” Ostenson smiled. “I had to have a talk with a couple of the girls to get them back on track, but then they settled in and we had one of our better team games. We took care of the ball a lot better than we had on Friday, and we shot the lights out.” 
After committing 28 turnovers against Thermopolis, on Saturday the squad had only 17. In addition, the shooters were hot from beyond the arc, with four different players draining eight threes throughout the game.
“They put forth a good effort of trying to take Jaylen out of the game, but the beauty of our team is that we have six or so girls who can score, so pick your poison,” Ostenson chuckled. “We were hitting the threes, Shelby had several run out layups, Mercedes was attacking the basket which is something she doesn’t normally do, and every player who hit the floor contributed to the win.” 
Scoring was indeed spread out among several players. Tidyman ended the night with 17 points, while Ostenson, Cass and Mercedes each added nine. MacKenzie Conzelman also got on the board with three points.
Defensively, the Lady Dogies were able to hold the Lady Bison to 36 points while scoring 48 of their own. In addition, Newcastle outrebounded Buffalo which contributed to the win. 
“If we can keep having offensive contributions like that, I think we’ll be in a lot of games,” Ostenson nodded. “We also played nine girls pretty solid with good minutes which is exactly what we need to do to keep having success.”
The win was sweet for a couple of reasons. First, it put Newcastle into a tie with Buffalo for the second seed in the Northwest quadrant, and it was the first win that the Lady Dogies have had against the Lady Bison since 2016. 
“That game held a lot of firsts for me,” chuckled Ostenson. “We finally beat Buffalo, we got to experience the new Pinnacle Bank Dogie Jumbotron which is pretty cool, and the girls sang the National Anthem to start the night. It was just a lot of fun.”
The Lady Dogies will wrap up their regular season this weekend at home as they host Douglas on Friday, which is also senior night, and then Wheatland on Saturday. Douglas is coming in with only one loss on the season, so Ostenson plans to have his team go into that contest and take care of the things they can. 
“We will still go at them, and if we are shooting well, who knows,” he shrugged. “I’m excited to try running Tiernan [Stanton] in there to defend their big inside girl to see how she responds to that, and it will be good to see what we can do against the unanimous number one team in 3A.”