Next Step: Tiger girls look to Clarinda in second round
RED OAK – On the heels of their 94-30 demolition of Clarinda Academy in the first round of the girls’ regional basketball tournament Saturday, the Red Oak Tigers travel to Clarinda to face the Cardinals Tuesday.
In Saturday’s win, the Tigers scored 94 points, 40 more points than their season high, 54, which they scored in a win against St. Albert (Council Bluffs), Dec. 1. The 94-point mark was also the most the Tigers have seen scored, by Red Oak or any opponent, in the last three years.
“The hardest part about a game like this was to the balance of trying to get some of our starters some minutes and work on some areas that we need worked on, while trying not to run up the score,” Red Oak Girls’ Basketball Head Coach Shelley Becker said. “This game was good for boosting morale. We needed that.”
Ingvild Skorpen and Gabrielle French led the Tigers scoring with 29 and 21 points respectively, in their limited minutes against Clarinda Academy. Every player on the Tigers’ extended bench had an opportunity to play in the playoff game.
Freshman Josie Snyder led the Tiger bench with seven points along with continuing the starting lineup’s stout defense.
The win broke the Tigers’ 16-game slide and kept their season alive as they face Clarinda.
The Cardinals defeated Shenandoah in a low scoring, 44-28 game Saturday. Kaylee Buch’s double-double led Clarinda with 15 points and 10 rebounds to go with Laura Steinauer’s 10 points.
The Tigers and Cardinals have met twice this season, both games falling into the hands of Clarinda.
The first, the Cardinals gave the Tigers their first loss of the season 36-31, Dec. 12, in a game that Red Oak felt they had a multitude of chances of winning the game.
The second meeting was not so competitive as Clarinda beat the Tigers in Red Oak 42-20, Jan. 19.
Steinaur and Buch led the Cardinals with 10 points each in the second game, but were only able to score a total of 12 points against a staunch defense in the first.
The biggest difference in the two games was the Red Oak defense in the first quarter. The Tigers held Clarinda to only four points in the first quarter of their first meeting, compared to 11 that they gave up in the second game.
Red Oak also only scored two points in the second quarter of the second contest, led by Kaely Piller’s six points in that game.
The regional quarterfinal game starts Tuesday at 7 p.m. in the Clarinda High School Gymnasium.
Earlier this week, the Tigers finished out their regular season with losses to Atlantic and Kuemper Catholic.
The Tigers had numerous chances to win against Atlantic as the Trojanns leading scorer, Taylor Young (18 points), missed six of eight free throws in the last 1:30 of the 53-49 game, all of which the Tigers only trailed by five or less.
Skorpen led the Tigers with 20 points in the loss, accompanied by French’s double double, scoring 15 points and pulling down 26 rebounds. Piller led the Tigers with five assists.
“We just kept shooting ourselves in the foot,” Becker said. “We had plenty of opportunities to catch up and win this game, we just couldn’t make our shots.”
In the regular season finale, the second quarter got away from the Tigers as the Knights scored 23 points, led by Cassie Gehling who had 25 points.
Skorpen scored 16 in the loss. French was one point away from another double double, scoring nine and grabbing 13 rebounds.
After winning their first four games of the season, the Tigers finished the regular season 4-16.
The winner of the Red Oak, Clarinda game will take on the winner of IKM-Manning and Griswold at Atlantic Friday at 7 p.m.