Girls take conference crown with a pair of wins
Alexis Green with a pass against Ronan.
Hungry Horse News
They ended the season on a high note.
The Columbia Falls girls basketball team dropped Ronan at home Thursday, 59-41 and beat Whitefish on the road Saturday, 37-30.
The wins secured the conference title for the Kats, with a 9-1 conference record and 14-3 overall mark.
Their lone conference loss was to Browning by one point.
Against Ronan, it took the Wildkats a little while to get the offense going — no one scored in the first four minutes.
But the Kats built a 33-15 lead by the half and were never really challenged by the Maidens.
Maddie Robison had 20 against the Maidens and Abbie Darsow came off the bench and hit a pair of treys to spark the offense in the first half.
Grace Gedlaman had 11 and Hope McAtee had 10.
Robison led the Kats against the Lady Bulldogs with 14. McAtee had 10.
Robison had a nice week, with five steals and three blocks against the Bulldogs and seven rebounds and 10 steals against Ronan.
The Whitefish win came with a word of caution from coach Cary Finberg, because the game was tied at 30 apiece with two minutes left.
Finberg said the team as a whole eased up defensively from the end of the first quarter to the two minute mark and that will cost them if they play like that come the divisional tourney.
The Kats had a 14-2 lead after the first quarter. They can’t ease up defensively, Finberg noted.
The girls will have nearly two weeks off from competition as the divisional tourney doesn’t start until the end of next week.
Finberg was not pleased with that. He would have liked to have seen the Kats playing in a Northwest tourney, just like the Southwest is doing.
“It’s a huge disadvantage (for us) that the south is playing a tourney and we’re not,” he said. “Hopefully it doesn’t affect us. The more you play (at the end of the season) and the less time you have sitting around the better.”
The decision to not have a district tourney was made by the athletic directors in the conference, Finberg noted.
The divisional tourney is Feb. 24-25 in Hamilton. The state tourney is March 10-12 in Missoula.