First half defense a shining moment in seventh straight loss for Eagles

The Northland Pines girls basketball team had a good defensive performance in the opening 18 minutes of a 48-25 road loss to Marathon, which is the seventh consecutive loss as the team looks to get out of a slump. The Lady Eagles dropped two games to Sparta and Onalaska at a holiday tournament at Adams-Friendship Dec. 27-28. The two scores were 28-67 and 28-52, respectively.
Pines fell to 2-8 (0-3) on the season with the loss.
Head Coach Jaclyn Halsey said after the loss that the defensive play in the first half kept the team in the game, but the offense couldn’t take advantage of the good effort on the other end.
“We started off the game with a 3-2 zone, and our defense rotations were textbook. We even did a great job with covering their high posts and running a triangle in the lane. Eleven minutes into the game, we only allowed 12 points. Our defense did what it needed to do in the first half,” she said. “Unfortunately, we weren’t able to see that pay off as we came out very flat on the offensive end. Game film showed that we were rotating the ball, and attempting an offense set, but we weren’t aggressive enough to find our opportunities.”
Offensively, the Eagles only scored three points in the opening roughly 12 minutes of the game and trailed 12-3.
Marathon extended that lead, and continued the defensive pressure, and led the Lady Eagles 35-12 almost midway through the second half.
Halsey said that at halftime the conversation was about the shooters on the team having a shooters mentality in the second half.
“As we got into the second half, it took us a couple minutes, but once we broke the ice with two back-to-back buckets, we started to look at creating our own opportunities, finding the gaps, and working better with the drive and dish,” she stated.
Rebounding, specifically on the offensive end, is something Pines could improve on to create more opportunities, according to the coaching staff.
“Something that has been killing us is we are not doing our job on offensive boards. A scary statistic is that out of 29 opportunities to grab an offensive board, we grabbed four,” explained Halsey. “It will be very hard to win games without being able to grab some second and third opportunities. Too many teams are beating us, solely on the fact that they grab their own offensive rebound and get those second chances.”
Senior Vienna Klemett led the Eagles with nine points, while Ryley Darr went 3-for-9 from the field and finished with six points.
Northland Pines returned to the court at Mosinee Tuesday for a Great Northern Conference matchup. The Eagles will then start a four-game homestand Thursday, Jan. 9, with a matchup with Medford at 7:15 p.m. Antigo will then come to town Tuesday, Jan. 14, with tipoff at 7:15 p.m.