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Beeters do it again

Chinook shuts down North Star for a second consecutive 9C girls championship

The Chinook girls basketball team has a lot of weapons. The Sugarbeeters can certainly put points on the board. But they can play defense, too, and defense helped them win a second straight District 9C girls championship.

Chinook dominated the second half of Saturday night’s championship tilt against the North Star Knights on the defensive end and, as a result, the Beeters came away with a 43-32 win and a repeat championship. In fact, Saturday night’s win at the Havre High gymnasium gave the Beeters three 9C titles in the last four years and delivered them their fourth straight trip to the Northern C Divisional.

“This is really exciting, we worked really hard for this, and this was our main goal, to repeat, first conference then districts,” said Chinook junior Katelyn Neibauer. “We were all really excited to accomplish those goals. I think this one is more exciting because we had a target on our back and we knew everybody was going to give us their best shot. But we overcame all the obstacles they threw at us.”

North Star will be going back to Great Falls as well, as Saturday night’s championship game was a repeat of last year’s title bout. But for a time, the Knights were looking like they would make Chinook’s repeat a lot more difficult.

North Star responded to Chinook’s 5-0 start to the game with a Mackenzie Hansen scoring barrage. Hansen hit an early 3-pointer, scored on a layup and closed the first quarter with another three as time expired. Her second triple of the period left the game knotted up at 11-11.

The Knights continued to play well through much of the second period as well and led 16-13 with 3:04 left in the half. But Chinook would close the quarter on an 8-2 run and take a slim, 21-18, lead into halftime, and the 9C title was still very much in doubt.

“In the first half, we got called for a lot of little touch fouls and that kind of hurt our momentum,” Chinook head coach Charlie Robinson said. “And I thought we were a little tentative shooting the ball. But we made some adjustments at halftime to what they were doing. We wanted to get our good shooters going against their zone, and then that opened up things for Makhayla (Farmer) and Tavin (Schneider) on the inside and we were able to take advantage of that.

“But I think the biggest difference in the second half was the fact that we played so well defensively,” he continued. “We forced North Star to change their game plan. I thought we were really aggressive with our defense and that was a big key.”

The Beeters were good on the defensive end indeed. They held the Knights without a field goal for 7:56 in the third quarter, while Neibauer drilled an early three and she and Farmer combined for all 11 of Chinook’s third-quarter points, taking the Beeters to a 32-20 lead.

“We didn’t score for seven minutes and 58 seconds or whatever it was there in the third quarter,” North Star head coach Griff Bye said. “Chinook did a really good job with their man defense and they mixed in some zone there, and the game got nice and slow at that point, and obviously, we’d like to play a littl,e faster. So that third quarter was kind of where things changed for us.”

North Star battled all the way to the end, going on a 9-2 run in the final stanza. But Farmer and Schneider dominated the paint and didn’t give the Knights enough room for any type of serious comeback.

“The game was a chess match,” Robinson said. “They (Knights) did some things in the first half that caused us to struggle, and we adjusted to it and were much better in the second half. That’s one thing these kids have done all year, they respond to adversity, and we faced some at times tonight, and the girls came through.”

The Beeters came through, especially on defense. Chinook held the Knights to just 31 percent shooting and the Beeters garnered a huge 32-15 edge on the boards. Offensively, Hansen was sharp, scoring 13 points and hitting two threes, but the Knights didn’t have another double-digit scorer. Bettie Carlon finished the game with six points, but was just 1-for-7 from the field, while Sheridan O’Neil and Tylynn Rettig each added five.

Still, North Star (14-6) accomplished a big goal in reaching the Northern C for yet another year. The Knights won their big semifinal showdown with Big Sandy Thursday night, and though they were disappointed in not being able to beat Chinook for the 9C title, they are excited to be moving on.

“Very proud of the team,” Bye said. “We had quite a few things happen the last few weeks which made this tournament more of a challenge for us. And then, Big Sandy and Box Elder have improved a lot so we knew it might be pretty hard to get out of this tournament. So we’re really happy to get out of here and on to divisionals.”

And divisionals is where the Beeters (19-1) are heading, too. In the championship game, Farmer paced a balanced attack with 16 points, while Neibauer tallied a double-double, scoring 11 points and grabbing 11 rebounds. Senior Emily Dennis finished with seven points, while the Beeters shot 50 percent from the field and had a decisive 10-4 edge on points in the paint.

But stats aside, Chinook is excited to once again be 9C champions, and they were proud of the fact that they played with a bull’s-eye on their backs all season long, and all week long in Havre. It’s not easy to be the favorite, but Chinook handled the pressure with flying colors.

“This is great, it's amazing, that’s about the only way to describe it,” Farmer said. “This is different than last year I think. We had a lot more pressure on us to be conference and district champions, but we pulled through and we are happy.”

“Having the pressure to stay on top is fairly new to this team,” Robinson said. “Other schools may have gone through this more often, but this is kind of new territory for us, winning as much as we have lately. And sometimes, when you’re good, it’s hard to perform like it, especially in this tournament. But the girls responded to it, they handled the pressure. They did a great job and I’m really proud of them.”

The Beeters will open the Northern C against the 7C runner-up Thursday at 5:30 p.m. in Great Falls. The Knights begin Northern C play against 7C champion Winnett-Grass Range Thursday at 11 a.m. The Northern C girls tourney runs through Saturday night at the Four Seasons Arena.

Twice As Nice!

Chinook 43, North Star 32 (1st)

North Star 11 7 2 12 – 32

Chinook 11 8 13 11 – 43

North Star – Mackenzie Hansen 4-8 3-6 13, Delainey Spicher 0-1 0-2 0, Graysen Spicher 0-2 0-0 0, Tylynn Rettig 2-4 1-2 5, Bettie Carlon 1-7 4-8 6, Alissa Borlaug 0-0 3-4 3, Whitney Wendland 0-0 0-0 0, Sheridan O'Neil 2-7 1-3 5. Totals: 9-29 12-25 32.

Chinook – Brooke Nicholson 1-2 1-1 3, Emily Dennis 3-7 1-2 7, Hannah Weber 0-2 0-0 0, Talya Johnson 1-2 0-0 2, Makhayla Farmer 8-14 0-0 16, Katelyn Neibauer 4-8 2-4 11, Tavin Schneider 2-3 0-0 4. Totals: 19-38 4-7 43.

3-pointers: North Star 2-5 (Hansen 2), Chinook 1-9 (Neibauer 1); Rebounds: North Star 15 (Carlon 5), Chinook 32 (Neibauer 11); Fouls: North Star 12, Chinook 20; Fouled out: None.

 

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