The Thunder Mountain High School girls basketball team was held scoreless in the third quarter Friday night and fell at home, splitting a two-game series with the Sitka Wolves.
Sitka’s good defensive positioning and ability to crank up the pressure helped them hamper Thunder Mountain offensively. When the final whistle blew the Falcons came up short, 37-48.
Compared to Thursday night’s contest, Sitka coach Sondra Lundvick found her team in a groove on both sides of the ball.
“I think we cranked up our defense a bit and then our offense felt smoother, we were more in the flow of the game… We’re not hiding anything, we have to play good defense… We harp on being in good positioning and contesting and trying to run the floor, and we thought we did a good job of that in the second half.”
Sitka was led in scoring by sophomore Tatum Bayne with 17. Hailey Denkinger had 14 and Alexandra Kirby seven.
TMHS was led by Ava Thompkins with 13 and Alondra Echiverri with eight.
TMHS coach Tanya Nizich felt her team needed to show more opportunism on offense.
“All five people on the court need to be looking to score, looking to be a threat, so we need to focus on that a little bit in practice… Can’t score a basket unless we shoot it.”
In the first half both teams went bucket for bucket and got to the line with ease. TMHS closed the first half with a one point lead, 21-20.
The third quarter belonged entirely to Sitka, however, and off the strength of their well-positioned defense the Wolves went on an eight-point run to close the quarter at 21-28.
The fourth quarter opened up offensively for the Falcons, who put up 16 points in the final period. Sitka continued to find Bayne open down low, however, and the visiting team was able to score 20 in the fourth and push their lead to 11 by the end of the match.
The TMHS girls team plays again at 5 p.m. today against their crosstown counterparts at JDH
