Photo by Samantha Davis: Minneota's Ava Rost (left) and Eden Meagher (right) both reach to grab a steal in the first half against Edgerton Tuesday night in a non-conference prep basketball game at Southwest Minnesota State University. The Vikings defeated the Flying Dutchmen 72-41.

MARSHALL — The Minneota girls basketball team picked up its second win in 24 hours with a dominant 72-41 victory over Edgerton on the final day of the girls holiday tournament held at Southwest Minnesota State University Tuesday night. The Vikings’ tenacious full-court press offered troubles to the Flying Dutchmen promptly, building an early double-digit lead and never looking back in the non-conference victory.

“We handled the ball well, and we didn’t crack under pressure,” sophomore Ava Rost said. “Everything was falling pretty well … There are some balls that we could definitely work on, but we did good on stopping them and [forcing them to] turn it over themselves. We [played] pretty clean ball. We didn’t have very many fouls, but we had quite a few that we could clean up.”

The Vikings earned an 18-point lead by halftime, 38-20, and kept their foot on the gas the rest of the way. Jaylyn Coequyt led with 25 points and eight rebounds, while Rost followed with 18 points behind six 3-pointers. Sarah Gruenes and Eden Meagher each had a team-high four steals.

Overall, Minneota outrebounded Edgerton 32-23 and had 16 steals, forcing 30 turnovers while committing 19. The Vikings shot 46% from the field and 47% from deep, going 7 of 15, and held the Flying Dutchmen to 33% in the field and 35% at 3.

Ava Rost opened up the scoring with a 3-pointer from the top of the key followed with a Gruenes feed down low to Meagher, and Minneota applied its full-court press on the Flying Dutchmen immediately.

Minneota forced several turnovers off its press and also had a strong rebounding effort to burst a double-digit lead in the opening minutes.

“We’ve been practicing it [press] all year … I just felt today was a good day [to run it] for playing them [Edgerton],” Minneota head coach Alan Panka said. “Having watched a few of their games, they’ve had some of the same turnover problems that we kind of have had, too … Just knowing that they kind of struggle once in a while with handling the ball, so we went after them a little bit, and it obviously succeeded, and did what we needed to do.”

Coequyt and Gruenes hit back-to-back baskets, momentarily followed by two consecutive 3s from Ava and Brynn Rost for an 18-5 edge. Along with its defense, Minneota’s perimeter shooting also shined in the first half.

Edgerton put together a 5-0 run to cut into an 18-10 deficit, yet a steal from Libby Sussner and a 2-on-1 transition play with Gruenes led to a fastbreak layup to halt any more Flying Dutchmen momentum from building.

Minneota switched into a zone defense in an attempt to throw Edgerton off, leading to a 12-5 Vikings’ run to end the half. Coequyt led all scorers with 14 first-half points.

“It [zone defense] was good. Their man [coverage] didn’t go very well for us, but with our zone, we definitely stopped their outside shots from falling,” Ava Rost said.

Rost caught the hot-hand in the opening of the second half with four consecutive 3-pointers in the span of two minutes to help the Vikings start on a 19-4 run and expand to a 57-24 lead.

All of Rost’s makes from deep during the run came from the right side of the perimeter between the corner and wing.

“I guess I never really made that many 3s,” Rost said, laughing. “When I made the first one, I just caught fire. After I got hit in the face later in the first half, that kind of hurt a little bit, but then I came back in the second half and started [back up].”

Minneota eventually built its lead up to 40 points, 68-28, with still 10 minutes to play and cruised the rest of the way.

The Vikings have had to adjust their lineup on the fly to start the week, after getting news on Monday that starting guard Autum Anderson would be missing a few weeks at minimum with a hand injury.

“We had to kind of reshuffle our lineup and roster with no practices, and you don’t know what’s going to happen and you don’t know how the kids are going to respond to new roles and different positions … And, they responded well,” Panka said. “Obviously, you saw that with Ava knocking down 3 after 3 in that game, and last night she played well, too. Today, we took care of the ball better than we have in a while, and we gained some confidence. Once that ball started going in the hoop, it’s crazy how much better your team looks, because that’s really what it came down to, is the ball went in the hoop a lot more today.”

The Vikings were coming off a 59-46 win over Sleepy Eye on Monday in the first day of the holiday tournament. Ava Rost cited that the back-to-back gamedays showed the team’s hard work, patience and passion for the game.

Minneota (5-2) will return back home on Friday and will look to open up the new year with a win over Redwood Valley (0-9) at 7 p.m.