Girls lose rebounding battle, split conference games

The Glasgow girls' basketball team held its own in its two road games this weekend, losing to Wolf Point on Friday before beating Plentywood on Saturday.
The girls' weekend showed improvement, especially in guarding against taller teams, but they were left short on offensive rebounds. In the two games, the Scotties gave up an astounding 53 offensive rebounds.
“On Wolf Point's first possession they had seven offensive rebounds before we ever got the ball,” head coach Willie Thibault said. “You can't expect to win to many basketball games doing that.”
Despite the rebound discrepancy, the Scotties actually led after the first quarter 14-11, but poor scoring in the second and third put the team in a hole. The team was outscored 32-16 over the two periods, including 14 points by the Wolves' Amanda Sansaver, as they fell behind 43-30 entering the final quarter.
The team was unable to garner any momentum in the fourth and lost the game 56-41. The Scotties were balanced in their scoring attack on the night. Every Scottie who played scored, with senior guard Taylor Markle leading the team by netting 10 points, while Rose Reyling finished with eight points.
On Saturday, the Scotties got back into the win column by getting loose on offense at Plentywood.
The Scotties fell behind in the first, but jumped back to take a 33-31 halftime lead against the taller Wildcats.
Though they still struggled to contain the offensive boards, the Scotties were able to outscore Plentywood in each of the last two quarters to walk away with the 64-55 victory. The girls are now 2-1 in conference and 5-4 overall, a mark good enough to place them in third in the conference.
“It was a much different intensity Saturday,” Thibault said. “It was good to get one out of two on the road, but it would have been nice to be more competitive the first night. I attribute that primarily to ball pressure and rebounding”
The Scotties, who experimented with a new defense to counter the size of the Wolves and Wildcats, needed to apply more ball pressure in order to make the defense work efficiently, but they should improve on that as the season progresses, Thibault said.
“With this defense (Wolf Point's bigs) had a total of four field goal attempts between them,” Thibault said. “We did a good job with that.”
This weekend the team will have a big test as Malta (3-0, 7-0) comes to town. The Scotties will use the game against the M-ettes as a measuring stick to determine how far they've come.
“You can see where you're at once you play Malta,” Thibault said. “They've got great tradition. They've got one of the best players in the state in any class, they go 6-foot-1 and 5-foot-11 in the post and they have tremendous quickness.”
On Saturday, the girls head back on the road to take on Poplar (0-5, 3-5).