FIELD TWP- The North Woods girls gave Ely a run for their money for a half last Thursday, but the Wolves took command in the second half and breezed to a 69-34 win.
North Woods got on the board first with a long trey from Tatum Barto, followed up with a deuce by Brynn Chosa, to take a 5-0 lead before Amelia Penke got the Ely offense rolling with a trifecta. The Wolves were dialed in from long range early, as they got three more triples from Penke, Zoe Mackenzie, and Lydia Shultz in a 14-2 run to go up 14-7. North Woods got back to within four at 18-14 on a putback by Emarie Gibson and a fast break by Barto with 11:15 left in the half. Penke broke a three-minute scoring drought for the Wolves when she was fouled on a score and made the free throw, and she followed that with two more baskets to give Ely a 25-14 lead. North Woods was within 10, 33-23, with 1:40 remaining, but a pair of Shultz free throws and a buzzer beater by Audrey Kallberg gave the Wolves a 14-point edge at the break, 37-23.
Penke had the hot hand coming out of the locker room, scoring two doubles and two triples in a 12-0 run that suddenly had the Grizzlies down 49-23. Barto finally drained a three to get the Grizzlies off the skids, but the Wolves continued the onslaught, dominating the second half 32-11 and coasting to the 69-34 win.
Penke was a scoring machine, going 14-of-26 from the floor with five treys and a game-high total of 34 points, scoring as much as the entire North Woods team. Clare Thomas was the other Ely player in double digits with ten. Chosa led North Woods with 13 points, followed by Barto with ten.
The Wolves’ Head Coach Tomi Cole was pleased with how her team responded after the break.
“At halftime, we certainly had to take a deeper look at our first half, and I thought we didn’t play up to the standard that I know that we can,” Cole said. “So the conversation was just go out and be aggressive, play a lot harder, and just have people step up and be more leaders out there. We needed better production from all of them on both ends of the floor, and it all starts with the defensive effort, and I thought that was a lot better in the second half.”
Grizzlies’ Head Coach Liz Cheney thought the halftime deficit didn’t reflect how well the Grizzlies played overall in the first half.
“We missed a lot of short shots that should’ve been right there,” Cheney said. “On defense we tried to zone and we let Penke get a few three pointers, so then we went to man to man and we were doing really good on that. And then a 14-point deficit gets to 20 to 25 really quickly and we didn’t score for quite a long time in the second half, and then you just feel deflated – it’s hard to come back. But we played a great first half. We just need to put all the pieces together and play one complete game.”