Belleville Girls Lose Three Road Games

“This game was a tale of two halves. The first half we did very well as we shot the ball well and transitioned very well. We were attacking the gaps and the scoring was spread out. We really had the momentum going our way. We were feeling pretty good about the way things were going,” said Coach Steinagel about the game at Evansville on January 18th. The girls led going into half-time, Belleville 23, Evansville 17.
“In the second half, Evansville went into a zone against us and we weren’t able to attack it as well. I have to give credit to Evansville as they packed the lane on defense. We weren’t able to get to the rim as much as I would have liked. Evansville did a really nice job on converting a couple of mistakes that eventually won them the game,” said Steinagel.
Evansville outscored the Lady Wildcats in the second half to win the game, 52-46. Tara Hanna led Belleville with 20 points, 11 rebounds and three assists. Taylor Legler contributed 9 points, with two rebounds and four assists and Grace Schulting scored 8 points and had three assists and four steals.
Evansville’s Heather Messling had 19 points for the night, Amanda Larson chipped in 9 and Hayley Krause scored 6 points.
The next night, the girls headed to Waterloo, and were trailing by four at the half.
“In the game against Waterloo, we were just stymied by their defense and a poor shooting night. It seemed every shot that we took would not go in. Again, Waterloo packed it in the lane as we only got 16 of our points in the paint and most of them were off of second chance points. As a team, Waterloo did a nice job keeping us out of the paint and making us take the jump shots. We could not hit a shot on this night, which would have helped us,” commented Steinagel.
The final score of the game was Waterloo 48, Belleville 38.
Belleville’s Aimee Sies led the team with 11 points, four rebounds and three steals. Tara Hanna scored 8 points and had nine rebounds and two steals, and Grace Schulting put 6 on the board with one rebound and one assist.
Waterloo’s Ashley Battenberg led her team with 12 points, two rebounds and six steals. Brittney Limoseth scored 10 points, with two rebounds and two assists. Ashley Kniesel put 8 points on the board for Waterloo, with five rebounds and three steals.
After the game at Wisconsin Heights on Friday night, Coach Steinagel had this to say, “With the 3rd road game in one week, this game was tough as we again could not get a shot to drop. We started out the game shooting 0/10 with all of them being great looks. Every time the ball went up it would just rattle out. After we got the first shot to fall, we really played well. In this game we took care of the ball as we had a season low in turnovers. We took care of the ball but we couldn’t convert on some key opportunities throughout the game. With this being our third game on the road this week, our legs were just tired and we couldn’t keep up with Heights.”
Wisconsin Heights won the game, 54-37.
Belleville’s leading scorers included Grace Schulting with 12 points and four rebounds, Lucy Grady with 7 points and one assist, Tara Hanna with 5 points, six rebounds and two steals, and Krista Diaz with 5 points, 11 rebounds and one assist.
Macenzie Kraemer led Wisconsin Heights with 17 points. Kristen Barman contributed 15 points and Hannah Zander scored 11 points.
The Lady Wildcats get a bit of a breather before they host Cambridge on January 28th, and head to Marshall on February 2nd.