The Mitchell High School girls basketball team had another turnover-filled season-opener against Huron for the second year in a row.
The Kernels (0-1) committed 17 turnovers and were down 20-3 at the end of the first quarter in the 50-26 loss to the Tigers on Saturday at the Corn Palace. Last year’s season-opener, Mitchell recorded 23 turnovers. In this year’s season-opener, along with the turnovers, Mitchell shot 29 percent from the field and zero assists.
“Basketball is complementary and I thought we did a pretty good job of defending early on, but we have to score,” Mitchell coach Cole Knippling said. “Scoring gets you momentum, it helps you feel connected and when you’re stuck on three points for the 8 to 11 minutes of the game, that’s tough.”
The Kernels, who Knippling said are adjusting to their roles as an entire team this season, couldn’t find their footing offensively. They made adjustments in the second quarter and outscored Huron 10 to 7, but the full court press that deemed successful for the Tigers in the first quarter, proved to be right again as they held Mitchell to only four points in the third quarter.
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“We knew what they were going to do, we just didn’t handle it that well,” Knippling said. “The important part about that pressure is not only to break it, but beat it. … If we can score off of their press, they’re not going to want to run it anymore. And I don’t think we ever made them pay all night in terms of getting layups out of their pressure that made them want to switch it up.”
Huron (2-0) outscored Mitchell 15 to 4 in the third quarter and had a lead as large as 30 as they cruised to a 24-point victory. Sawyer Stoebner led the Kernels in points with 10 while Sarah Sebert made two 3-pointers in the second half and finished with seven points.
For the Tigers, Hamtyn Heinz led all players with 22 points and Isabella Shreeve added 17 points.
Despite the loss and fighting an uphill battle for the majority of the game, Knippling said he saw good signs from his team in the second half. He said the Kernels started to knock down more shots, become more comfortable in their roles and that the goal is to hope their second half play can carry over into a good first half in their next game.
“When you look at it, 25 points is about ten possessions so if you look at it as five more stops and five more scores, that’s a 20 point swing and the game is different,” Knippling said. “We’ll look at the film and we’ll find five possessions we could have won on both ends of the floor and we’ll get them to understand that that can do a lot to the final outcome. It’s a lot of little things that can end up being a big difference and we have a lot to work on.”
Mitchell plays Watertown at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Dec. 14 at the Watertown Civic Arena.
Huron 50, Mitchell 26
Huron (2-0): Field goal stats were not provided. Hamtyn Heinz 5-7 22, Isabella Shreeve 3-4 17, Alexis Feenstra 0-0 4, Heavan Gainey 0-0 2, Adison Moore 0-0 2, Bryn Huber 1-2 1. Total 50.
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Mitchell (0-1): Sawyer Stoebner 4-9 2-2 10, Sarah Sebert 2-11 1-2 7, Taylor Giblin 1-9 1-2 4, Maddie Kempf 1-1 0-1 3, Kaitlyn Christensen 1-1 0-0 2, Lauren Van Overschelde 0-7 0-0 0. Totals 9-39 4-7 26.
H 20 27 42 50
MHS 3 10 14 26
3-point field goals: H: stats were not provided; M: 4-22 (Sebert 2-7, Giblin 1-9, Kempf 1-1, Van Overschelde 0-5). Rebounds: H: 45 (Feenstra 10, Huber 10); M: 15 (Sebert 3). Assists: H: 10 (Heinz 2); M: 0. Steals: H: 11 (Feenstra 2); M: 5 (Stoebner 2). Blocks: H 2 (Kopfmann 1), M 1 (Sebert 1). Turnovers: H 5, M 17.
