The Dragons girls basketball team competed in the Granite City Classic Friday and Saturday. Here’s a recap of the tournament from Head Coach Ted Hasz:
Dragons go 1-1 at the high powered Granite City Classic.
Hutchinson 63
Pine City 43
The Dragons had a great opportunity to play one of the best AAA teams in the state on Thursday, December 26th at the Breakdown Sports USA Granite City Classic. "We were really looking forward to this match up as we knew Hutchinson would really test us and show us areas where we need to get better." "Hutch has two quality bigs who go 6'3 and 6'1 along with multiple athletic guards who can really get after you defensively." Pine City played a good first half and went into the locker room at half time with a one point lead 30-29. "We were happy to have the lead at half but we knew Hutchinson had a lot of depth and we would have to have a great 2nd half. The second half started well for the Dragons with 2 quick buckets and a 5 point lead 34-29. At this point Hutchinson turned up the defense and became very methodical on offense. "It seemed that the more patient they got the more rushed we got." "It is one of those great learning experiences that you get from playing great teams." The rest of the half was all Hutchinson. The Dragons were led in scoring by Sophie Lahti with 16 points. "We did a good job of getting Sophie the ball as she had a mismatch and she did a nice job of getting buckets." Sophie also had 10 rebounds. Lily Wilson had 8 points, 3 rebounds and 4 assists. Alaina Steele had 6 points, 4 assists and 4 steals. Ellie Hasz had 6 points 4 rebounds, 3 steals and 3 blocks. Meredith Kolling had 4 points. Ashley Faur had 3 points, 2 steals and 2 blocks. "We told the kids that Hutchinson is a state tournament level team, which they proved the following day when they defeated Becker, the #1 team in AAA. Playing teams of that caliber is exactly what we need in order to prepare for the end of February."
Pine City 63
Annandale 51
The following day the Dragons found themselves matched up with Annandale, who had the 10th best QRF rating in class AA. "The level of competition we saw in St. Cloud was exactly what we hoped it would be." After a back and forth first 10 minutes, Pine City started to build a lead. "We played some really good defense especially in the second part of the first half." The Dragons held Annandale to 19 points in the first half and led 30-19 at the half. The Dragons led throughout the second half with Annandale cutting the lead to 9 points on a few occasions." The kids always seemed to hit a clutch shot when it felt like the momentum might swing." "We showed some good maturity throughout the game. Annandale kept fighting and we always found an answer." Ellie Hasz found multiple ways to score and ended the game with 20 points, 9 rebounds and 4 steals. Sophie Lahti had 15 points and 4 rebounds. Meredith Kolling had 12 points, 5 rebounds and 4 steals. Lily Wilson had 9 points. Alaina Steele had 5 points, 6 assists and 4 steals. Ashley Faur had 2 points and 4 rebounds. "We are looking forward to the challenges that our schedule brings in 2020. We have a lot of great teams, including multiple ranked teams, coming to play in Pine City the next couple months. We encourage everyone to come out and watch this talented group play."
Photo Credit: Lance Furber
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