Tracy-Milroy-Balaton's Melaina Ankrum looks to drive to the paint in the first half against Southwest Minnesota Christian in the Section 3A play-in Thursday night in Tracy.

TRACY — Gretchen Lanoue and Melaina Ankrum each showed tremendous growth in increased roles for the Tracy-Milroy-Balaton girls basketball team over the course of the season, helping the Panthers add four more wins to their total from last year as well as a postseason victory.

The Panthers expected a learning curve heading into the season based on players’ varying levels of experience, TMB head coach Derek Ashbaugh said. TMB had some returning varsity players, but no seniors and many players who were new to the varsity level. While the process took longer than the team had hoped, they found a nice rhythm as the season went on.

TMB started to string together wins in mid-January. From Jan. 9 through Jan. 29, the Panthers won six out of eight games, with the lone losses being by 4 points to Kerkhoven-Murdock-Sunburg and another loss to then-ranked MACCRAY. Five of the Panthers’ six wins over the stretch came by double digits.

TMB faced a strong schedule down the final stretch, dropping seven straight to close the regular season. Each of those losses either came against a team with 17 or more wins, or came in a back-and-forth effort decided by single digits. Still, the Panthers bounced back to start the section tournament and defeated Southwest Minnesota Christian in the play-in round, 47-39, before falling to top-seeded Hills-Beaver Creek.

“We kind of take a look at it in some ways as a two-year project to build up some different things, hopefully, throughout the course of this year,” Ashbaugh said. “We were competitive and had a lot of really close games against some very good teams, just weren’t quite able to get over the hump in some of those. But it’s a really good building step for next year. We’ll return everybody on the team, so hopefully they take it and run with it.”

With a senior-free roster, younger players had ample opportunity to grow and develop. Lanoue, a sophomore, and Ankrum, a junior, were among the players who made the biggest leaps for the Panthers.

Lanoue finished the season as the team’s leading scorer, averaging 16.9 points per game on 43% shooting from the field and 30% shooting from 3.

Lanoue was also impactful in other ways, leading the team with 10 rebounds per game — 4.4 of which came on the offensive glass — and averaging 3.1 assists and 2.5 steals.

Ankrum was also a defensive leader for the team with 3.8 steals per game and a team-high 3.8 assists. She trailed only Lanoue in points and rebounds, averaging 11.9 points per game with 6.5 rebounds.

Ashbaugh attributed the success of the Panthers’ primary scoring duo to their aggression and physicality on the court.

“They don’t exactly shy away from contact, and both of them have a kind of knack for rebounding the basketball, and it was kind of important for us given we’re a little undersized,” Ashbaugh said, with Elsie Knott at 6-foot-flat being the only player on the roster over 5-foot-9. “They really started to find a groove part of the way through December, not just scoring but in other aspects of their game, too. That really helped the rest of the team settle into their roles that were really important … They do a good job of attacking rebounds and filled that need that our team desperately needed.”

Knott also used her size to the team’s advantage on the defensive end of the court, blocking 18 shots over the course of the season. The Panthers also got complementary scoring from Allison Dolan and Alli Adams, who each averaged around 6 points per game.

While seniors are key in setting the tone for most teams in practice, the team’s core of juniors — Ankrum, Adams, Taylor Munson, Braelynn Kirk, Lauren Knakmuhs and Virginia Munson — didn’t shy away from leadership roles to help guide the team in the right direction.

“It took maybe a little bit of time to figure out those [leadership] roles and when would be a good time to step up and say things, but especially as we got into January, I think we started to figure out that sometimes, some of you guys are going to have to do some dirty work,” Ashbaugh said. “That’s going to be taken upon several kids, not just one or two. This group started to talk more about what needs to be done, and I do some of things as well, so hopefully … that’s something they’re building on for next year.”