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Otters win; move to 22-1 [UPDATED]
Published 11:01am Friday, February 10, 2012 Updated 11:37pm Friday, February 10, 2012Mariah Monke stepped up big time in a big time game at Sartell, where she went up against 6’4” Abby Whitney of the Sabres and won the battle decisively, getting a double-double in the first half alone (11 points and 10 rebounds), ending up scoring 17 points on the night to Whitney’s 7, and grabbing a game-high 13 rebounds, 7 on the offensive end. Monke also had 4 assists and 2 blocked shots.
She led the Otters to a 55-42 victory on Thursday.
With Monke setting the tone, the team rebounded well all night and played an aggressive trapping defense that caused 18 Sabre turnovers and held them to 19 less shots than the Otters, a good recipe for victory. The Sabres’ guard play is based on penetrate and dish, but the Otters defensive help came timely and gave their guards no room to operate. At the same time, Monke and Hannah Swenson fronted Whitney well, batting away a number of attempts to dump the ball down low to her.
Sartell’s apparent defensive plan was to keep the ball out of Brianna Rasmusson’s hands, and to some extent it worked, holding her to only 4 points, but it left Mariah Monke one-on-one in the post and Sydney Schultz open at the 3-point arc and they led the Otters in scoring. Schultz had 4 three pointers on the night, and really had an off-night as she shot 16 of them to get that total. But the fact she was able to get that many clear shots from the arc means the margin could only have been bigger if she was on. Missed three point shots tend to rebound out further giving more opportunity for offensive rebounds, and the Otters had 17 offensive rebounds to Sartell’s 15 defensive rebounds.
Sartell came out hitting their shots early and stepped out to a 10-4 lead, looking like they were going to control the game. But the Otters picked up their defense and between Monke’s layups and Schultz’s threes, Fergus took the lead at the 9 minute mark in the first half and never relinquished it after that.
The Otters led 33-24 at the half and kept the lead around the 10 point mark until 8 minutes left in the second half, when Fergus went on an 8-point run to put the game away. Sartell made two 3-point heaves in the last minute to make the score look closer than the game was.
“It’s sometimes hard to get off the bus from a two-hour drive and be ready to play,” noted Otter coach Josh Mohagen, “but our girls were fired up for this game and played with great energy on defense and were enthusiastic on the boards. Mariah had a great game for us, showing by example how hard you need to play to beat a good team like Sartell.”
Scoring Summary: Fergus Falls 55, Sartell 42
Fergus Falls: M. Monke 17, S. Schultz 12, A. Monke 8, H. Zenner 5, H. Swenson 5, B. Rasmusson 4, C. Ouren 4.
Sartell: A. Haider 14, H. Guetter 12, A. Whitney 7, T. Mareck 3, R. Winter 2, C. Ross 2, A. Hayes 2
Fergus Falls just moved back up to the #2 ranking in the state and reflected that in their victory over Sartell, their 22nd win with just 1 loss.
