For The Tribune
After Orleans’ Audrey Elrod scored a basket early in the fourth period to cut Trinity Lutheran’s lead to 39-33, the Cougars responded with a 12-4 run to take control of Saturday afternoon’s girls’ game — and went on to a 55-43 win.
Cougars coach Mike Lang said he was pleased with the win as his team extended its record to 9-1, its win streak to seven and its record in the Bollinger Athletic Complex to 4-1.
“We got a 12-point win and I’m happy walking out of here with a 12-point win,” Lang said. “Orleans didn’t stop playing for 32 minutes. I told Coach (Jared) Gilbert if they keep playing that hard they’re going to get some victories this season. We can’t play the scoreboard, we can’t lose our intensity when we get a lead and we’ve got to maintain and try to build.”
Orleans (2-8) started three freshmen and two juniors.
Abby Hackman started out strong offensively for the Cougars with three baskets and two free throws for eight points to help Trinity take a 17-10 lead at the end of the opening quarter.
The Bulldogs made three 3-pointers in the second period and outscored Trinity 13-12 and trail 29-23 at the half.
“Our defense left some holes in it and Orleans did a great job finding the open spaces. We’ve got to do a better job of getting into our rotations,” Lang said.
“We’re going to go back and look at the film and make our corrections.”
Lang was pleased the way his team opened the third period.
“We came out in the second half and made some adjustments, and we played hard in the second half,” Lang said. “We worked the ball through the post.”
He said Jodi Goecker gave a good effort at both ends of the floor.
“Jodi was a real spark for us defensively. I was glad to see Jodi score.”
Goecker made 6 of 7 free throws in the fourth period and finished with 10 points, while Hackman topped all players with 20 points.
“The job Savannah (Harwager) did on (Sheridan) Robbins, keeping her from getting started in the second half, kind of catapulted us and got us going,” Lang said.
Robbins had a hot hand in the first half with three baskets in the first quarter, five points, including a 3-pointer in the second, and she finished with 19 points.
One problem area for the Cougars was (16) turnovers.
“The first couple possessions of the game we had some good looks to the post, but we didn’t make good passes to the post,” Lang said.
“We want to leak out and get some easy lay ups but we didn’t make good passes down the court, and when we had some turnovers we stopped pushing it. We’ve just got to take better a care of the ball at times and know when to make decisions and know when not to make decisions.”
Trinity will host Austin Tuesday night