Minneota guard Grace Hennen (center) drives into the lane in the first half of the Vikings' 65-50 loss to Mountain Iron-Buhl in the Class A quarterfinals at Maturi Pavilion Thursday morning.

MINNEAPOLIS — Ireland Stassen and Faith Myhre combined for 32 points but the Minneota girls basketball team couldn’t keep up with top-seeded Mountain Iron-Buhl’s scoring depth in the Vikings’ 65-50 loss in the Class A quarterfinals at the Maturi Pavilion Thursday morning.

Stassen led the Vikings’ offense with her ability to score in the paint, finishing with 18 points on 7-14 from the field. Conversely, Faith Myhre scored most of her 14 points from 3-point range, shooting 3-6 from beyond the arc. She also scored the first basket of the game with an old-fashioned 3 when she got fouled while making a layup and knocked down the and-1 at the free-throw line.

Stassen followed up Myhre’s game-opening 3-point play with a layup of her own to give the Vikings an early 5-0 lead on a pair of buckets from second-chance points, but the Rangers rattled off a 12-2 run to take command of the game. That was the last time the Rangers trailed in the game before going on to lead by as many as 19 points.

No other Vikings made multiple field goals in the game.

Minneota’s press has given teams trouble in terms of turnovers all season, but Mountain Iron-Buhl’s press did even more damage on Thursday. They forced Minneota to turn the ball over 24 times in the game and turned those turnovers into 25 points. Minneota scored 17 points off turnovers from 16 forced turnovers.

The Rangers’ trio of Jordan Zubich, Hali Savela and Sage Ganyo was too much for the Vikings to contain. Zubich led Mountain Iron-Buhl in scoring with 25 points while Savela and Ganyo contributed 19 and 16 points respectively. Ganyo also passed for a game-high six assists.

Zubich and Ganyo shot a combined 5-6 from 3-point range. The rest of the team had struggles from long range, shooting 2-8, but the Vikings also had issues. Aside from Myhre, Minneota shot 0-10 from beyond the arc.

Rebounding was something that the Vikings excelled at in the game. They held a 30-20 advantage on the boards that helped them to a 14-2 advantage in second-chance points. Ireland Stassen finished with 11 rebounds, giving her a double-double and five more rebounds than any other player on either team. Myhre and Kenadi Arndt followed behind her with five each.

Minneota trailed 30-24 at halftime. Myhre knocked down a corner 3 to cut the Rangers’ lead to one possession in the final minute, but Mountain Iron-Buhl responded right back to gain some extra breathing room as they headed into the locker room. Still, the Vikings’ defense was able to hold the Rangers in check at the break.

“We just put enough pressure on to make it difficult, make them earn everything,” Minnneota head coach Alan Panka said. “We were switching things, they didn’t get free looks off screens and stuff like that… We need to do a little bit better job of taking care of their cutters coming across the lane, but for the most part, I can’t be upset at all about the way we played.”

The Vikings came out cold after halftime. They didn’t score a bucket for the first three-and-a-half minutes of the half until Myhre connected on a 3-pointer. From there, the Rangers continued to dominate Mountain Iron-Buhl outscored the Rangers by 9 points after halftime and at one point went on a 10-0 run.

“We didn’t get the looks necessarily that we wanted to. We were struggling to get more offense a little, but credit to them and their defense switching all the time between man and zone. It made it difficult but they played better than we did today,” Panka said.

The Vikings came into this season with a coaching change after Chad Johnston switched over to the Minneota boys basketball team. There were doubts about their ability to continue to compete for a state title, but they still returned to the Class A tournament.

“We heard the talk of, with Chad jumping over, that he was going to go to the state tournament with the boys and the girls aren’t going to be good. We still got back. So it’s credit to the kids,” Panka said. “You graduated four seniors and one of our main bench players last year and went through some adversity through the season, some injuries here and there and everything else. But the kids fought all year long and they deserve to be here.”

Myrhe added that, despite the challenges that the team faced before and during the season, they still expected to still be competing for a state title in March.

“That was obviously the ultimate goal. There’s a lot of great teams in our section, and a lot of people are like, ‘oh, this isn’t Minneota’s year, they’re not going to go,’ but that just shows that this program has been built so well and that it’s not always about the players, it’s about what you teach them.”

Minneota (21-9) will play No. 4 Underwood in the consolation bracket Friday at 10 a.m.

“We’ve got two ways to go on this: we can go and fight for something or go home. Hopefully tomorrow we’ll fight for some hardware.”

Mountain Iron-Buhl (28-3) will face No. 5 Belgrade-Brooten-Elrosa in Williams Arena Friday at noon.