Photo by Emily Daniels Minneota’s Morgan Kockelman dribbles the ball during their game against TMB on Friday. The Vikings defeated the Panthers 61-25.

MINNEOTA – The Minneota and the Tracy-Milroy-Balaton girls basketball teams met for the first conference matchup of the season, and it was the Vikings who controlled the tempo from start to finish as Minneota earned its second win of the season with a 61-25 victory over the Panthers Friday night.

Minneota coach Chad Johnston was pleased with his team’s efforts on both ends of the floor, but thought their defensive performance was the biggest factor.

“Defense was really our highlight, we’re doing a lot of good things in our full-court pressure,” said Johnston. “We did a nice job of rotating and communicating, which has been our focus, that’s been our half point is making sure that we rotate out of traps. I was really happy with what we did with our defensive stuff.”

Right off the opening tip, the Vikings found early and quick ways to create scoring opportunities while the Panthers couldn’t seem to find the connection that they wanted to. Minneota went on a six-point run early on that gave them an 8-5 lead, but with the Panthers not too far behind them the Vikings had to keep the intensity going in order to maintain the lead they had created. With that in their mindset, the Vikings kept growing their lead and gave the Panthers little time on their offensive end. Lydia Sussner was a big asset to the Vikings lead, when given the ball she followed through helping Minneota grow to a 19-7 lead with 11:27 left to play in the first half.

TMB showed weaknesses with the ball on offense but never showed signs of giving up on each other and continued to fight aggressively and determined, and were able to reconnect their tempo on offense to end the Vikings’ 13-point run and brought the score to 24-11 with 8:16 remaining in the half. Along with Sussner’s success under the basket, Abby and Morgan Hennen worked together to keep the Vikings in the lead. Abby Hennen showed her strengths on the defensive end by reading the Panthers’ passes and creating steals for transition baskets. Although TMB had some struggles with ball control, they continued to make things happen with the help of Cassidy Smith’s big offensive efforts to cut the deficit to 12 at 27-15 with 4:32 left to play in the first half. But the Vikings didn’t slow down what they were doing on the court for the remainder of the first which led them to a 34-18 lead at halftime.

Coming into the second half with a sizeable lead over the Panthers, the Vikings were ready to roll and continue that intensity from the first half and carry it into the second. Lizzy Gillingham came ready to go, being aggressive right away and scoring the first points in the half. Gillingham started up where they left off, but TMB responded to that in a positive way with Samantha Edwards being aggressive under the basket and showing the Vikings that they can fight back. With a big first half from Abby Hennen, she continued to shine on the floor and get after every play that was made and helped give the Vikings a 38-18 lead with 16:19 to play in the game.

Minneota’s defense started pressing early on the Panthers and that caused TMB to play under the pressure, finding a little bit of struggles to get the ball where they needed it to go. One thing that made the Vikings successful with their plays were rebounds, the Panthers couldn’t seem to fight under the basket enough to get the possession. The Vikings used their successful rebounding to their advantage and continued to grow their lead to 45-18 with 11:03 remaining in the half. Jadyn Lessman found her spark on the court and brought in a few more points for the Panthers and slowly closing the gap to 46-22 with just under seven minutes left. With just a few minutes remaining, both teams started to play more aggressively with the ball and not putting up as many shots as they would have hoped, as the intensity that picked up on the court brought in a lot of fouls for each team. The Vikings started to put up more shots than the Panthers down the stretch which led them to a 61-25 win over TMB.

The Panthers have seen a lot of success very early on in the season and coach Derek Ashbaugh sees the team getting the team chemistry that they are going to need to be successful this season and win games.

“We’re seeing some chemistry building between players now, which is good,” said Ashbaugh. “I don’t think that we quit at all and that’s another good thing, but we still have plenty of things to work on and have to make a few adjustments.”

The Vikings will be back in action on the road against Yellow Medicine East on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. and the Panthers will be back at home on Tuesday to take on the Lakeview Lakers at 7:30 p.m.

Going forward with the season Johnston wants his team to continue to play with the mindset that there are only certain things that you can control and play the game that they know how to play in order to be successful.

“I always preach to them that you can control defense and that’s the only part of the game that you can control,” said Johnston. “You can control your effort, your intensity and offensively you can’t control shots sometimes. So even though we did some good things on offense, some shots didn’t go.”