Blue Jays put away Bravettes
A week removed from its thrilling 62-58 victory over Bismarck, the Jamestown girls basketball team continued to move forward at home against the Turtle Mountain Bravettes on Saturday.By: Michael Savaloja, The Jamestown Sun
- Kyra Dewald
A week removed from its thrilling 62-58 victory over Bismarck, the Jamestown girls basketball team continued to move forward at home against the Turtle Mountain Bravettes on Saturday.
The Blue Jays put nine athletes into the scoring column — with 4 of those in double figures — helping the home team hang 80 points on the scoreboard in an 80-58 West Region victory over Turtle Mountain.
“Collectively, it was a good team effort,” JHS coach Andy Skunberg said. “With four people in double figures, we’ll take that every night.”
Kyra Dewald poured in a game-high 20 points, with 15 of those markers coming in the first half which helped the Jays carve out a 39-24 advantage at the break. McKayla Orr dropped in 15 points, while Billie Buchanan tossed in 12 and Rebekah Horgan scored 10.
Horgan helped put the game away, scoring all of her points over the final 18 minutes.
Jamestown won a much tighter, 73-69, affair against the Bravettes up in Belcourt back on Jan. 4. But the Blue Jays hit the court on Saturday ready to roll, jumping out a 13-0 lead to start it on 6 of 7 shooting.
Orr hit a 3-pointer to cap the early run, but most of the offensive — which rang true for most of the night for Jamestown — came on easy buckets in transition. Jamestown forced the Bravettes into 4 early turnovers and a total of 20 in the game.
“We’ve had a lot of practices, and we knew if we could just get out and run and make some shots that we’d be fine tonight,” Skunberg said. “Our goal is to push it and make it a track meet. That was the key tonight to get to 80, but defensively we did have some lapses.”
Turtle Mountain used a 17-4 run to tie the game at 17-17 with 8:32 left in the opening half. Turtle Mountain’s Whitney Wallette was causing some problems, scoring 11 points before the break.
But just after the Bravettes tied it, Dewald connected from long range to send the Jays into the locker room on a 22-7 run.
Jamestown held Wallette in check in the second half, as she’d score just 6 points after the break to end with 17 points and 14 rebounds. But Turtle Mountain’s Joee Keplin came alive, hitting a trey and scoring 12 of her 14 points to keep the Bravettes viable in the early going of the second.
Turtle Mountain did cut Jamestown’s advantage to 5 points (52-47) with under nine minutes left, but that’s as close as the Jays would allow them to get.
“(Keplin) is a decent little player. We knew she was one of the girls we had to keep an eye on and keep in front of us,” Skunberg said. “Wallette had a lot of good looks, but our three post players did a good job defending her and keeping her off the glass a little bit.”
Jamestown improved to 8-4 overall and 6-3 in the West Region with the victory. The team will be heading out west this weekend, traveling to face Williston on Friday and Dickinson on Saturday.
“We said we had to get on (Turtle Mountain) early and we did that. The problem is we were letting them back in the game too many times,” Skunberg said. “Too many times we had a 15-, 18-point lead and all of a sudden I look up and it’s 6, it’s 5. We’ve just got to be more consistent.”
Jamestown 80, Turtle Mountain 58
Turtle Mountain 24 34 — 58
Jamestown 39 41 — 80
Turtle Mountain — Whitney Wallette 17, Joee Keplin 14, Winter Monette 9, Madison Keplin 8, Dallas Davis 6, Gia Davis 4. Totals: 23-73 FG, 7-14 FT, 8 steals (M. Keplin 3), 4 assists (Wallette 2), 1 block (Wallette), 40 rebounds (Wallette 14), 20 turnovers, 16 fouls. 3-pointers: (5-17) M. Keplin 2, Monette 2, J. Keplin 1.
Jamestown — Kyra Dewald 20, McKayla Orr 15, Billie Buchanan 12, Rebekah Horgan 10, Paige Peterson 9, Miah Dabill 5, Siri Jystad 4, Erin Mullowney 3, Addie Eamon 2. Totals: 31-75 FG, 14-16 FT, 11 steals (Dewald 4), 9 assists (Dewald 4), 1 block (Buchanan), 40 rebounds (Orr 6, Peterson 6, Dabill 6, Buchanan 6), 17 turnovers, 13 fouls. 3-pointers: (4-17) Orr 1, Dewald 1, Mullowney 1, Dabill 1.
Records: Jamestown 8-4, 6-3 West Region; Turtle Mountain 5-10, 4-9 West Region.
Sun sports writer Michael Savaloja can be reached at (701) 952-8461 or by email at msavaloja@jamestownsun.com
Tags: sports, jays, basketball
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