Lady Dogies open up conference play

Sonja Karp
NLJ Sports Reporter
 
After a three-week hiatus from competition, the Lady Dogies got back into action Friday and Saturday as they opened up 3A East Conference play by hosting the Lady Trailblazers of Torrington, and went to Gering, Neb., for a non-conference game on Saturday.
Though the ladies ended the weekend without a win, head coach Chad Ostenson was excited about what he saw from his young team both nights. 
“After practicing for three weeks, I was excited with how the girls played this weekend,” he nodded. “The kids played hard and executed the things we asked them to do pretty well. We are a little behind the rest of the conference as far as games played because we didn’t have anything over the break, but I think we made good use of our time to make improvements to our game.”
The matchup against Torrington on Friday night was a pretty even one, and although the Blazers had a stronger inside presence than the Dogies, both teams play an up-tempo game which made for exciting action for fans in attendance. The fast pace of the contest did result in some less-than-pretty play, but the mistakes were made by both teams.
“For everything that went wrong, we played well against Torrington,” Ostenson admitted. “We had 31 turnovers, but we forced 32. We also gave up 29 offensive rebounds, which is too many, but given that we gave up that many offensive possessions and only lost by six, that isn’t too bad.”
The Lady Dogies came out of the gate attacking the basket and playing smothering defense, which allowed them to jump out to a quick 7-0 lead with only two minutes ticked off the clock. Though Blazer head coach Jeff Halley called a time-out to try to settle his team, Newcastle went on to dominate for the remainder of the first quarter. 
Never a team to roll over, Torrington closed the gap in the second quarter and in the last second of play before the half, they converted on a fast-break layup to tie things up at 26 as the teams headed to the locker room.
“The game was a little physical, and it took a minute to get jump ball calls which made the game really physical,” Ostenson began. “Though I liked it that the girls got to experience that because they need to learn how to play in that situation, I think it played into losing some momentum in the second and third quarter.”
In the third quarter, the Lady Blazers began to really utilize their inside post players to take a 41-31 lead heading into the final frame of play. With eight minutes to go, Newcastle dug in and began to chip away at the lead, coming within four points several times. However, time ran out before they were able to overcome the deficit, so they gave up the W with a 52-58 final score. 
“The turnovers and the second chances they got killed us. Torrington is notorious for putting up a lot of shots and getting those second chance points,” Ostenson stated. “We did some good things, but we’re going to have to work on being physical and pulling down rebounds. They just took it away from us a couple of times like we’re the freshmen we are. We’ll have that a little bit, but we need to get an edge to us where we aren’t going to let them do that to us anymore.”
Though the loss wasn’t what the team had hoped for, Ostenson took many positives from the contest. A big one for his was that there were three players in double figures and several others who made important contributions. 
Jaylen Osten led the team with 14 points, and she was followed closely by Shelby Tidyman with 13 and Mercedes Voelker with 12, all of which she hit from beyond the arc.
On Saturday, the ladies faced off against Lady Bulldogs in Gering. According to Ostenson, the two teams matched up well regarding height, but his team didn’t match the energy of the Nebraska squad.
“We were a little slow and pretty flat to start, and they got a good lead early on,” he admitted. “We came out and played better after the first quarter, but we just couldn’t dig ourselves out of the hole and we couldn’t close the gap to less than six.”
Gering was able to extend the lead to 12 by the time the contest ended to take the 56-44 win over the Lady Dogies. Once again, Jaylen Ostenson led her team with 14 points, Ally Cass tossed in 13 while Voelker added six, Tidyman five, Makenzie Conzelman three and Madi Pearson rounded scoring out with two points.
“I like where we’re at right now. It could be easy to get a little bit down, but we’ve been in every game we’ve played,” Ostenson insisted. “I’ve felt like we had a chance with three minutes to play so that is so positive for where we are in the season.”
Ostenson’s squad has only one contest this week when the Lady Outlaws of Rawlins come to town on Saturday for another 3A East Conference matchup.