Maidens sitting pretty for divisionals

RONAN — With a first-round bye and home court advantage, the Ronan Maidens will be playing with an edge during this week's divisionals at the Ronan Events Center.

The Maidens play on Thursday at 1 p.m. against the winner of a Polson-Bigfork game Wednesday at 1 p.m. The winner of that game advances to the championship game of the Northwestern Class A divisional, meaning the Maidens are potentially two victories away from state tournament play.

Ronan's victory over Polson on Thursday night was the clincher. Just four girls scored for the Maidens, led by Jamie Lake's 14 points. She scored several times on knifing runs to the lane where her teammates caught her defender off-guard with quick passes.

"I'm happy to get it taken care of," said Ronan coach Dave Paisley. "Polson did a good job tonight. We needed to concentrate on keeping them out of the paint, and we did that to a certain extent."

Both teams used a trapping defense high in the backcourt and overplayed the passing lanes that caused a lot of turnovers early in the game. Ronan did a fine job of locating Strohm Fouty and limiting her shot attempts, but they had a tough time with Kara Huyser getting rebounds.

"We try to talk it up a lot on defense, and we think we can do a lot of things even though we're shorter," said Bridget Taylor, who scored 10 of Ronan's points and helped with the frontcourt defense. "We try to front a lot of taller players, and we feel like our quickness can make up for the lack of height."

Ronan's quickness led to several steals in the second half, but still they couldn't pull away. From a 23-20 deficit at halftime, Polson closed to 30-29 largely because of their inside play.

Ronan did not use the press in the fourth quarter as they tried to concentrate on limiting the quality of Polson's shots. When jump shots by the Maidens started to fall, that increased the pressure on the Lady Pirates to execute, and they couldn't convert.

Jamie Lake's three-pointer with about 2:30 to play was insurmountable for Polson, and they played the intentional foul game shortly thereafter. Jen Orchard was overzealous with her foul and body-checked Des Krell into the visitor's bench with 17 seconds left, and that resulted in a technical foul.

Polson had a chance for a second seed in divisionals with a victory here and against Libby over the weekend, but their 44-37 loss ended that dream.

"This was Ronan's first conference title since 1995, so this was special," said Taylor. "I think we have a lot of experience with all our seniors and I hope we win divisionals."

Since the conference title and first-round bye were already wrapped up, there wasn't much incentive for Ronan in their regular season finale versus Columbia Falls. But the Maidens stayed the course and gritted out a tough 55-44 game against a gritty, physical Wildkats team.

"I wanted to get our eight seniors as much playing time as possible," said Paisley. "We didn't pass the ball very well in our game tonight, so I plan on practicing fundamentals leading up to divisionals."

"I really like our chances to go to state," said Lake. "We need to limit second chance opportunities and keep other teams off the boards and we'll be fine."

Ronan 44, Polson 37

Polson 8 12 9 8 — 37

Ronan 12 11 7 14 — 44

POLSON: Jen Orchard 5, Strohm Fouty 3, Kari Mowbray 8, Kara Huyser 19, Alia Eraky 2.

RONAN: Lauryn Lynch 8, Des Krell 12, Jamie Lake 14, Bridget Taylor 10.

Ronan 55, Columbia Falls 44

Columbia Falls 6 12 11 15 — 44

Ronan 6 17 16 16 — 55

COLUMBIA FALLS: Callie Spencer 5, Jenna Toole 12, Kim Pearce 8, Bekah Stoltz 11, Dani Herman 8.

RONAN: Amber Johnson 2, Lauryn Lynch 9, Cambrie Starkel 6, Kayla Couture 7, Shayla Couture 11, Des Krell 12, Jamie Lake 6, Bridget Taylor 2.