Photo by Sam Thiel Minneota’s McKenna Yost goes up for a layup around a trio of Southwest Minnesota Christian defenders during their game on Friday. Minneota defeated SWC 62-34.

MINNEOTA — After opening its season with a victory against Ortonville, the Minneota girls basketball team looked to keep the momentum going against Southwest Minnesota Christian. In a rematch of the Section 3A championship game from last year, SWC was able to keep things close in the first half, but a key 14-3 run to start the second frame helped Minneota earn a 62-34 victory on Friday.

Minneota coach Chad Johnston said they were able to do a good job of limiting SWC’s second and third-chance opportunities on offense as the game went on.

“I told the girls going into the game that I thought defense was going to be a key for us,” Johnston said. “Going into the starting lineup they definitely have the height advantage over us and I was a little concerned about second and third attempts and us not boxing out, but we settled in and started doing a good job of that and started running the floor.”

It was tight to start, as SWC scored the first five points of the game before a 3-pointer by McKenna Yost and a layup from Ireland Stassen tied things up at 5-5 with 14:08 left in the first half. Minneota kept attacking on offense, as a 3-pointer from Yost and a layup by Jeren Rost highlighted a 13-3 run and built a double-digit advantage at 18-8 with 8:15 left in the frame. Both teams would trade points over the remainder of the half, as a layup by Natalee Rolbiecki made it 26-12 with two minutes left before the Eagles closed the half on a 7-2 run to draw to within single digits at 28-19 going into the locker rooms.

Unlike its first-half counterpart, Minneota got out to a strong start to the second half, as a 3-pointer by Kenadi Arndt made it 36-21 before a Kennedi Jurrens jumper and Rolbiecki layup pushed the advantage to 42-22 with 11:50 left, closing a 14-3 run. Minneota continued to create separation over the next few minutes, as back-to-back layups by Rost and Arndt made it 52-26 with 6:19 left and the Vikings didn’t let it get below 26 the rest of the way en route to the 62-34 final.

No stats were available at press time.

Johnston said offensively, their key was their ability to get out in transition as well as find the open player when they drove into the lane.

“Transition was a big one, we’re good in transition and that’s what we want to do,” Johnston said. “I thought we did a good job when we dribble penetrated and found the right secondary person and we had better spacing when we did that.”

Up next

Minneota (2-0) will face YME on the road on Tuesday at 7:15 p.m. Johnston said they’re getting some solid play from their bench so far and they need to continue to work on their half-court offense.

“I think a positive thing is we’re getting good minutes out of our bench, we’re going to have to do that, and there’s some things that we’re planning this year that we haven’t done yet, so we’re still trying to phase things in, but right now we’re doing a lot of good things,” Johnston said. “We’ve got a lot of experience with a lot of girls back from last year so we just need to fine-tune our offense a little bit; with girls being out with volleyball and I’m out with football, we just haven’t really had a chance to talk about things, so this next week will be key and we’re going to continue to try and make ourselves better and more efficient in the half-court.”