Photo by Samantha Davis: Minneota's Natalie DeCock (20) goes in for a layup in the first half against Pipestone Area Tuesday night in a non-conference prep girls basketball game. The Vikings fell short to the Arrows 59-55.

MINNEOTA — After battling back from a 17-point deficit to take a second-half lead, the Minneota girls basketball team fell to Class 2A’s Pipestone Area 59-55 Tuesday night in a non-conference nailbiter. Ava Rost and Jaylyn Coequyt led the Vikings with double-double performances.

“They didn’t quit fighting. They battled back. Against the best team in double A in the south, or at least one of the top two, you fight like heck, you’re getting buried, and you don’t quit,” Minneota head coach Al Panka said, expressing his pride in the team’s effort. “You come back, you get that lead and then it goes away, but just the fact that you didn’t quit is huge.”

Although the Vikings were troubled by the Arrows’ full-court press and 3-point shooting the first half, Minneota kept its fight alive and turned its momentum around to end the first half and start the second. However in the end, the Viking committed 42 turnovers while Pipestone finished with 14.

“When we got to where we needed to be, we were fine. We broke it [Pipestone’s press]. There were a few times we missed layups on the back end of it, and that hurt us. I mean, you look at a 4-point game at the end, and two, three, four of those misses, that’s the difference in the ball game,” Panka said. “Again, you can nitpick all those little things throughout … They’re [Pipestone] athletic, they’ve got some length. It was good press that they ran against us, and it was good for us to go against it to try to take care of the ball and break it, and we did all right. Eventually, we did well enough that they called it off [in the second half].”

Coequyt finished with 14 points and 14 rebounds, while Rost tallied 10 points and 16 boards. Pipestone senior Jadyn Kor led with 26 points behind five 3-pointers.

Pipestone has had a hot start its season, winning its first seven games straight before its lone loss came recently to No. 9 Fairmont 63-38 on Dec. 19 and now sit 10-1 overall.

The Vikings are amid a strong stretch in its regular season, to which Panka described as a mid-season opportunity to get better against tough competition before the postseason arrives. Minneota entered Tuesday on the second of back-to-back gamedays after falling to MACCRAY by 6 points on Monday, the 2025 Section 3A champions and Class A state runners-up.

“When you’re playing good games like this on back-to-back nights, and I know neither of those teams were at full force either, just like we weren’t, you hope that the big minutes for a lot of these girls that they got are things they can learn from and use,” Panka said. “Watch the film, see what they did right, what they did wrong, correct it and fix the things that were wrong. Hopefully they learn from it, because, yeah, you want to win every game, but you hope that what they learned from tonight carries into when it’s playoff time, when it’s lose and done.”

Down by 11 points entering the second half, Jaylyn Coequyt got Minneota’s rally started with a deep 2 along with another Vikings’ basket to bring the score down to single-digits, 40-31, after Pipestone hit a baseline layup.

Minneota continued to find Jaylyn Coequyt near the block in finding an answer to the Arrows’ zone defense, who put in another basket along with a Sarah Gruenes jumpshot just inside the wing to trail 43-35 while Pipestone struggled to get a shot to fall.

“When we passed well, it [zone offense] looked good … We were doing what we needed to on the offensive side and throwing it to the right person at the right time and had our movement in there. It looked really good,” Panka said. “Just relax, move the ball. You’re not going to get the same look every time. They’re going to adjust, they’re going to shift, but you can still get a different look. It’s just going to be somewhere else. Again, you learn from it, you have it on film, you get to watch it again and hopefully it’s something that you can use in the future.”

Gruenes hit a 3-pointer with 9:35 to go to bring the score within 5, 45-40, while Leah Coequyt made a midrange jumper in the lane to take the game to a single possession.

Natalie DeCock took the next 4 points for the Vikings, after breaking Pipestone’s pressto get wide open layups to tie the score 46-46 with seven minutes to play, igniting the Vikings’ gym with energy.

Minneota took its first lead of the game since a 3-0 start after DeCock nailed another deep 2 just inside the wing. The Arrows hit a 3-pointer out of a timeout, which Jaylyn Coequyt had a quick response to for a Minneota 50-49 edge with another interior shot.

After a back-and-forth defensive battle over the course of the final minutes, Pipestone eventually hit another 3-pointer and field goal to take a 55-50 lead back with two minutes left, and did what it could to run down the clock to under a minute as the Vikings intentionally fouled.

Pipestone made a few late free throws, and although Rost hit a 3-pointer as did Eden Meagher with an offensive putback directly after, there wasn’t enough time left to fully overcome with two seconds on the clock as the Arrows dribbled out their last possession.

Minneota outrebounded Pipestone 57-28, primarily on the defensive glass.

The Arrows had a few instances throughout the first half of back-to-back 3-pointers and pulled ahead to a 35-18 lead while Minneota stayed in man coverage.

Rost drilled a 3 from the top of the key to start a change in Minneota’s momentum, followed with three straight baskets from Jaylyn Coequyt inside to cut into a 38-27 deficit going into halftime.

Minneota (6-4) will look to get back on track when it hosts Ortonville (0-11) on Thursday before traveling to take on No. 6 Central Minnesota Christian (6-1) on Monday. Both games are slated for 7 p.m.