Lady Royals Protect Home Court Versus TMCC
Article by Chris Harris, Devils Lake Journal Sports, Nov 25th, 2019
Lake Region State College had nine players to suit up against under-manned Turtle Mountain Community College, all of them contributed to the scoring led by freshman Maddy Leaf. Leaf, out of Warwick, scored a game-high 22 points, making 7 of 11 from the field including 5 of 11 from 3-point range as the Royals bounced back from the loss to Sheridan College this past Saturday with the 108-61 win over the Mikinocks on Sunday, Nov. 24 to conclude the women's portion of the Holiday Inn Express Classic from the Sports Center.
Leaf also had eight rebounds and six assists for the Royals who improved to 7-4 on the season.
"It was nice to see Maddy knock some shots down because she struggled the last two games at home," said Royals head coach Danny Mertens.
"We responded a little bit. I thought we executed really well. It doesn't matter who we're playing. We ran a lot of different sets, got a lot of different looks and the kids played hard. It was nice to see Steph get a triple-double today and limit the turnovers. That's what leaders do, bouncing back from Saturday night," Mertens said.
Stephanie Miller finished with 19 points, 10 rebounds and had 11 assists. She committed just two turnovers on Sunday compared to the seven she had in the loss to Sheridan. Hailey Hewitt scored 18 points and had eight rebounds, Jadyn Pollert, coming off a 26 point effort against Sheridan finished with 16 points for the Royals who opened the game with a 21-7 lead and cruised from there, leading by 21 after one quarter and 33 at halftime.
The Royals out-rebounded the Mikinocks 55-27 and held them to nine second chance points. The Royals converted 21 turnovers into 31 points.
"We always say that when you play in these tournaments, if you play .500 ball you're be successful. The one thing that I don't like is that you should win at home and play .500 on the road but we're playing .500 at the two classics home," Mertens said.
"Hopefully we can learn from the loss [to Sheridan] and it'll help us come February and March."
Avery Ziegler (Devils Lake) scored 10 points, Kayla Bryne had eight points and Jasmine Lohnes (Four Winds/Minnewaukan) had seven points and four rebounds for Lake Region.
The Mikinocks, who only suited five players, were led by Falynn Ferris' 21 points and Caitlyn Davis scored 16 points.