ELY — The first Ely-North Woods girls game in January was a 78-39 blowout for the visiting Wolves, and at the time, Grizzlies Head Coach Liz Cheney remarked that had the team been better prepared, North Woods would have given Ely a much stiffer test.
That proved to be prophetic last Thursday when the Grizzlies invaded the Memorial High gym for the rematch, as North Woods pushed the Wolves to their limit before running out of gas in the closing minutes to lose 62-46.
This game was different from the outset, as each time the Wolves built a lead, the Grizzlies refused to let them get away. From a slender 11-9 advantage, Ely built a 22-12 lead, capping the run with an Amelia Penke deuce. North Woods trailed by 13 late in the first half, but a trey by Tatum Barto trimmed the gap to 28-18 with 1:30 remaining. In a “don’t blink or you’ll miss it” finish, North WoodS scored five points in the final six seconds of the half, the first three on a triple by Brynn Chosa, and two more when Barto knifed in to steal the Ely inbounds pass and lay it in. The Wolves’ lead was cut in half going into the locker room, 30-25.
While Ely had success driving the ball into the lane, three balls from Barto and Chosa kept the Grizzlies in the hunt at 39-34 with 13 minutes left in the game. Zoe Mackenzie scored to put the Wolves up by seven, but a 7-0 Grizzlies run capped by a Chosa drive down the lane knotted the score at 41-41 with nine minutes left. Ely Head Coach Tomi Cole called a time out to regroup, and the Wolves answered with a 9-0 run, including a triple and a double from Gretta Lowe. Trailing 50-41, the Grizzlies made another push with a two by Corra Brodeen and a triple by Zoey Burckhardt to close to within four at 50-46.
No one bothered to tell the Timberwolves that the momentum appeared to be swinging back toward the Grizzlies, and buckets by Penke and Kaija Shultz spelled the beginning of the end for North Woods. Cole adjusted the Ely defense to key on the Grizzlies’ top two scorers, Chosa and Barto, and the gambit worked to perfection, as North Woods didn’t score in the final six minutes of the game. With the offense clicking, the Wolves rolled to a 62-46 win that was hardly reflective of the bulk of the contest.
The Wolves got a big-time game from Lydia Shultz with 24 points, followed by Penke with 12, and Lowe with 10. Leading North Woods was Chosa with 15 and Barto with 13.
Cheney was upbeat after the loss.
“I was very happy with our play at Ely,” Cheney said. “The girls did well and dug in. We played some solid defense and our offense was more ball movement and patience. In the last five minutes when Ely went on the scor,ing run, we panicked and stopped passing the ball and started getting one shot in offense which really hurt.”
Cole noted adjustments her team had to make while giving praise to the Grizzlies.
“We did not shoot well from outside, and we had to make adjustments to score, which we weren’t used to,” she said. “North Woods certainly came to play and I thought they played really well. Both Tatum Barto and Brynn Chosa knocked down big shots and we made a switch defensively to try and limit them, which helped us close the game in the final minutes.”
Both teams were tuning up for the start of the 7A sectional tournament on Feb. 26 with games in the final week of the regular season.