Scotties Shoot Down Eagles With Last Second 3-Pointer

The Glasgow girls' basketball team opened the season with an exclamation point, beating Sidney with a 3-pointer in the final seconds to notch their first win of the season. Senior guard Michelle Mulligan hit a dagger with just 16 seconds left to give Glasgow a 38-36 lead in the game, a score the Scotties would go on to win by.

“We were pretty resilient to kind of hang with them and that's what you ask for in a game like that, a chance to win it at the end,” head coach Willie Thibault said. “Fortunately we made a good pass and hit a good shot.”

The Scotties were strong the entire game, and started the contest by taking a 6-0 lead in the game. Glasgow was great defensively, holding the Eagles without a field goal for the first 7:37 of the game.

“I was happy with the way our kids battled,” Thibault said. “Sidney's a very physical team. We were giving up not only size but strength too.”

Glasgow held the lead for the entire first half, but started to fall behind in the third quarter when turnovers and offensive rebounds really started to take their toll. The Eagles took their first lead midway through the third quarter and the game went back and forth until the final shot. Despite the height deficit, Glasgow won the rebounding battle in the game, 45-43, but was killed on the offensive boards giving up 20 rebounds to Sidney.

“Our kids worked their butts off,” Thibault said. “They got thrown all over the floor and they did a good job of hanging in and basically not going away. That's a tribute to our kids because they believe in what we do and they work hard.”

The only major blemish from the Scotties was that they had an astounding 34 turnovers, most on tie ups and mishandled passes. Some can be contributed to the Eagles' zone defense, but many came from poor decisions.

“There's some things we need to clean up,” Thibault said. “For us to compete at the level we need to compete at we can't be doing that.”

Mulligan led the Scotties with 11 points in the game and was 2-for-2 from deep. Alaina Cole just missed out on a double-double with nine points and nine rebounds. Jami Johnson scored six points with nine rebounds and four assists.

This week the Scotties have another tough test, facing two state tournament qualifiers from a year ago on back-to-back nights. On Friday, Glasgow hosts Broadus, which returns three starters from the Southern division championship team. The Scotties travel to Baker on Saturday. The Spartans return four starters from the team that finished fourth at State last season.

The Scotties are also battling a flu bug that's been traveling around the area. For most of the week they've been practicing minus a few players, making it tough to get a continuity on the team.

“We're bouncing people back and forth,” Thibault said. “We've got people hurt, we've got people sick, there's stuff going on where we can't get everyone together. We have to get a solid 10 to practice together all the time and know what's going on.”

The Scotties tip off against Broadus beginning with JV games at 3 p.m. on Friday.