Photo by Jake Przytarski Minneota’s Abby Hennen drives past a BOLD defender during their game on Monday. The Vikings defeated the Warriors 57-44.

MINNEOTA — On their quest to repeat as Class A state champions, the No. 1 ranked Minneota girls basketball team has not shied away from a pair of early tests to start the regular season in facing back to back ranked opponents out of the gate.

Just days after narrowly escaping with a victory over No. 3 Cromwell in their season-opener, the Vikings welcomed No. 5 BOLD to their home gym on Monday where they improved to 2-0 on the season with a 57-44 win over the Warriors.

Coach Chad Johnston said the team benefits greatly from the experience gained by some of the team’s younger players in these early tests, and is pleased with the contributions they’ve made off the bench.

“I think one of the good things for us right now is girls coming off the bench. “Our young girls (are) giving us good quality minutes and that’s what we need,” said Johnston. “Girls coming off the bench and doing their roles is what we really need and we’ve gotten that against two very good teams so I’m happy about that right now.”

In addition to the contributions provided off the bench, Minneota’s starters were also major factors in Monday’s victory as Abby Hennen, Morgan Hennen and Natalee Rolbiecki provided an early lift for the team with made baskets to give the Vikings a 9-2 lead.

The Warriors responded by putting together a 12-5 run to climb all the way back to tie the game at 14 and force a Minneota timeout. Out of the break, Abby Hennen knocked down a three-pointer that not only gave Minneota the lead once more at 17-14, but put her over 1,000 points in her career.

“Anytime you get a 1,000-point scorer by their junior year that’s pretty impressive,” said Johnston. “She’s had a couple games now where she’s gotten in a little bit of foul trouble and has to sit on the bench and we want to be able to sub her when we want to sub her, not when we have to. But she is just a huge impact player for us. She can do so many things — dribble-drive, good passes, hit the three and she’s just a great all-around player and our girls have to feed off her.”

Down the stretch of the first half, the Warriors took their only lead of the game at 20-19, but were unable to protect it as the Vikings began to utilize their full-court press and went on a 9-3 run in the final minutes of play. As a result, Minneota carried a 28-23 lead into halftime.

Minneota’s stifling press continued to frustrate BOLD out of the half with the Vikings able to turn multiple steals into fast break baskets to push their lead to double-digits at 38-28.

Though the press negatively impacted their ability to run the floor, Johnston said it was a played a large role in their success.

“I think a lot (of our success) came off the press,” said Johnston. “They had a lot of turnovers and that fed obviously to us getting the ball back or us controlling off that. I thought earlier in the game we ran the floor very well. As we started running the press we got a little gassed and maybe didn’t do it so much on offense, but I think our transition game is a strength of ours.”

The Vikings led by as many as 18 late in the game at 53-35, and went on to defeat the Warriors 57-44.

Minneota (2-0) will open up its Camden Conference schedule on Dec. 2 when Yellow Medicine East comes to town for a 7:15 p.m. tipoff. Leading up to the matchup, Johnston said the focus in practice will be to expand their defense and get all players up to speed on their positions and roles.

“We’re pretty green yet. We’ve got a lot of things to work on,” said Johnston. “I’d say our (big) thing is to try and get a couple extra sets in. We’re pretty vanilla on defense right now so our focus is to, now that we kind of know who is in the rotation, get them knowing all of the positions they need to know and what we’re doing at all times.”