The Mitchell High School girls basketball team made a couple of runs and gave itself a chance to steal a season-opening win. But for every run, Huron answered with a timely 3-pointer.
A strong shooting display that saw the Tigers shoot 12-for-24 from deep led to a 65-59 win over the Kernels on Sunday at the Corn Palace. Six different Huron players made a 3, as Isabella Shreeve finished 6-for-11 from beyond the arc during her 22-point outing.
“We were hoping by going man-to-man we wouldn’t give them near as many good looks, but they still shot 50 percent,” Mitchell coach Cole Knippling said. “They shoot like that all year, they’ll be tough to beat.”
Whether it was strong ball movement or Mitchell’s defenders going under screens on shooters, Huron (1-1) found ways to make timely 3s. It made four 3s in the final 4:29 of the third quarter to build a 52-41 lead. And then off a Mitchell (0-1) turnover in the fourth quarter, Hamtyn Heinz sank its 12th triple to extend its lead to 60-53 with 2:42 to play. She finished with eight points.
Huron’s hot shooting kept the Kernels at a distance. Mitchell cut into the double-digit lead and came within four points in the final minutes, though it was also hurt by 23 turnovers and 22 fouls. Every Kernel starter picked up multiple fouls, with three reaching four fouls.
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Macy Kempf played most of the game with two fouls, while Adaya Plastow was called for her fourth foul in the first minute of the second half.
“It definitely screwed up what we had planned,” Knippling said about the foul trouble. “We definitely threw some lineups out there that I don’t think I ever drew up or thought of.”
The Kernels relied on their bench players, including Sawyer Stoebner and Sarah Sebert to end the first half. They went on a 10-2 run, turning an eight-point deficit into a 30-30 tie at halftime. Similar to the end of the game, Mitchell made a run, but couldn’t get over the hump.
“We pushed ourselves,” said Camryn Krogman, who scored a team-high 16 points by finishing strong at the rim. “We had confidence. We did the best we could. We kept a positive mindset for the entire game.”
Krogman was the only Kernel to score in double figures. Huron’s zone forced Mitchell to settle for outside shots and denied its passes into the post, while Knippling hoped its sets would’ve led to more open looks. Kempf finished with nine points and six rebounds, while Stoebner added seven points off the bench. It shot 43.4 percent from the field.
“I thought we did a poor job on offensive execution,” Knippling said. “We left a lot of opportunities slip by because we weren’t running our stuff. The looks you try to get in practice, we didn’t get a whole lot of those. I’m proud of us -- we kind of scrapped together being in the game for not really doing that much offensively for what we wanted to do.”
Defensively, when Mitchell forced the Tigers off the 3-point line, it led to 22 takeaways and tough shots. Still, Tenley Buddenhagen and Heavan Gainey both scored 10 points.
Mitchell travels to Rapid City Central on Saturday.
“We were pretty prepared, but we had quite a few turnovers,” Krogman said. “We didn’t execute our plays like we should have.”
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Huron 65, Mitchell 59
Huron (1-1): Isabella Shreeve 8-13 0-0 22, Tenley Buddenhagen 1-14 7-12 10, Alexis Feenstra 2-5 2-2 7, Heavan Gainey 3-9 4-6 10, Brooke Schilz 0-1 0-0 0, Lexy Gilbert 0-0 0-0 0, Mattie Huber 0-0 0-0 0, Hamtyn Heinz 3-5 0-0 8, Isabelle Ellwein 1-3 1-2 4, Gracie Culver 1-1 0-0 3. Team totals: 19-51 14-22 64.
Mitchell (0-1): Adaya Plastow 0-2 0-0 0, Avia Haley 2-8 0-1 6, Camryn Krogman 8-19 0-0 16, Macy Kempf 3-6 3-4 9, Mariyah Turner 2-3 2-2 6, Lizzie Tyler 1-3 2-4 4, Taylor Giblin 2-4 0-0 5, Ella Flippin 0-0 0-0 0, Sawyer Stoebner 3-4 1-3 7, Sarah Sebert 2-4 1-2 6, Kaitlyn Christensen 0-0 0-0 0, Gabby Sonne 0-0 0-0 0. Team totals: 23-53 9-16 59.
H 15 30 52 65
MHS 11 30 41 59
3-pointers: H 12-24 (Shreeve 6-11, Heinz 2-2, Buddenhagen 1-3, Feenstra 1-2, Ellwein 1-2, Culver 1-1); MHS 4-19 (Haley 2-7, Giblin 1-2, Sebert 1-2, Krogman 0-8). Rebounds: H 28 (Gainey 8); MHS 26 (Kempf 6). Assists: H 1; MHS 2. Steals: H 9 (Buddenhagen 4, Shreeve 2); MHS 3. Turnovers: H 22; MHS 23. Fouls: H 18; MHS 22.
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