Tough week for Kimball girls, drop two

A tough week for the Kimball High girls as they suffered losses in their final two regular season games leaving them with a 12-10 record going into sub-district tournament play. On Friday night, in the final home game of the season, Kimball fell to a scrappy Hemingford club 56-52 after leading almost the entire contest. On Saturday, in an away contest at Sutherland, Kimball lost 61-37.

The loss to Hemingford was almost a duplicate of their loss to the Lady Bobcats a week ago in WTC tournament play where they led through 3 quarters only to give up 29 points in the fourth period to lose 61-47. This time, Kimball was again leading 37-32 going into the fourth quarter only to give up 24 points and lose in the final minute of play.

With Shelby Vogel and Kelly Green each scoring 5 points, Kimball took a lead at the end of the first period of play 10-8 and kept that 2 point lead at 21-19 at half time. With Danika Daum scoring the final 10 points of the third quarter Kimball was up 37-32 heading into the final quarter of play. When Madison Biesecker scored 3 points the old fashioned way to tie the game at 50-50 with 1:31 to play, and Shelby Vogel hit a pair of free throws to go ahead 52-50 with 1:16 left, it looked like the Lady Longhorns were going to get the win, but a couple of untimely turnovers off errant passes led to their downfall. You might say that 29 turnovers led to their down fall.

"We struggled in the fourth quarter. We didn't take care of the ball. Too many turnovers in the back court" said coach Chauncey Pedersen. "I was pleased with the first 3 quarters and felt we scored pretty well," he said.

Sophomore Danika Daum was scoreless the first half, but wound up with 14 points and 10 rebounds going 7/7 at the foul line. Kelly Green was zeroed in from long range and hit 4 treys and had game scoring honors for Kimball with 17 points along with her 6 rebounds. Shelby Vogel was also in double figures with 12 and had 4 rebounds. Jessica Hanks scored 4, had 6 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals and 1 block, Biesecker had 3 points, and Arica McCloud 2. Laura Flores failed to score but had 5 rebounds and 3 assists, and Brooke Hager had 3 steals.

As a team, Kimball was 16/23 at the line, 15/51 from the field going 6/20 on 3 pointers, had 36 rebounds with 13 offensive, 10 steals, 8 assists, and 1 blocked shot, 17 fouls and 29 turnovers. Hemingford had 31 rebounds, were 13/20 at the line, 20/70 from the field going 3/13 on 3 point attempts and had 19 fouls. They were led by freshman Brooke Turek with 21, and senior Precious Campbell with 13.

Kimball 10 11 16 15 -- 52

Hemingford 08 11 13 24 -- 56

Kimball jumped out to an 8-2 lead at Sutherland Saturday night, but trailed 14-10 at the quarter break and went down hill from that point on. Coach Pedersen said "Sutherland has some really good guards who can handle the ball well and shoot well. We didn't have one of our better games."

Daum led Kimball scoring with 15 going 7/11 (from the foul line. Arica McCloud came off the bench to play well and score 8 going 4/5 at the line. She also had 4 rebounds. Vogel finished with 6 points and 4 rebounds with a block. Flores hit a trey for her 3 points as did Green, and Hanks had 2.

Kimball was 13/24 at the line, 11/52 from the field going 2/14 on treys, had 22 rebounds with 7 offensive, 6 steals, 3 assists, 1 block, 19 turnovers and 19 fouls.

Sutherland had 36 rebounds, 14 more than Kimball, were 17/20 at the line, shot 20/60 from the field with 4/12 on 3 point attempts, and had 18 fouls. Sam Staggs had 19, Kaley Stokey 17, and Jalyne Schuster 16 to lead the Lady Sailors coached by former Kimball High grad, Jason Gunderson.

Coach Pedersen cited the play of Arica McCloud off the bench and said "Again, we need to play four quarters of good basketball. I still feel we have not played our best game, and now is the time to step up and play our best and put three games together."

The Kimball girls are in action at Sidney this week in subdistrict tournament play that opened on Tuesday.