The Lady Swedes girls basketball team started out the
Southwest Conference tournament on Tuesday, Jan. 24 at
home against the Holdrege Dusters.
Head Coach for the Swedes, Kassie Schuett, said, “SWC
is a tough conference with some really good teams. We
opened the tournament with Holdrege who we played
once earlier in the year.”
The game against the Dusters started out slow as the
first quarter resulted in only 4 points on the board for the
Swedes. However, when the second quarter began, the
Swedes were able to pick up the pace and add 22 points
before heading in for halftime, making the score 26-16.
During the third quarter, the Lady Swedes kept the momentum
going and continued to rack up the points. Gothenburg
played great defense against Holdrege, keeping
them to only 2 points in the third. The Dusters began to
find their groove in the final quarter, and found ways to
score against the Swedes, but Gothenburg had accumulated
enough points to stay in the lead as the game came
to an end. The final score was 50-32.
The win against Holdrege advanced the Lady Swedes to
the semi-final match against the Ogallala Indians at Kearney
High School on Friday, Jan. 27. “Next round we had
Ogallala. They were a tough team in terms of length. They
have a few girls on their roster that are 6'0" tall and that
is a hard match-up for us as our tallest girl stands at 5'9"
on a good day!” said Coach Schuett.
The Swedes came into the game ready to achieve the
next advancement that would take them to the tournament
championship the following day. Their motivation
for the game was shown as they scored in the double
digits for every quarter of this game. “We were able to
shoot well in the first quarter from the outside which
then helped spread their zone out and open things on
the inside,” said Schuett.
This was the highest scoring quarter of the night for
the Lady Swedes, with 21 points. Throughout the rest of
the game, the Swedes gave minimal chances for the Indians
to score. Gothenburg continued to add points on
the board and lengthen their lead over the Indians. At the
end of the game, the score was 59-37.
“In the finals we saw a tough Minden team that is in the
running for ranks in C-1. We started setting the pace of
the game how we wanted, we caused turnovers with our
press and were able to get some points off transition,”
said Coach Schuett.
The Swedes proved that they could handle this tough
team as they doubled the Whippets in points as the first
quarter came to an end. However, Minden is a strong
team and was ready to fight back. The Whippets outscored
the Swedes in the second quarter, but as the halftime
break began, the Lady Swedes still held the lead by
just 3 points.
During the second half, the Swedes struggled to run an
efficient offense to allow them to gain much momentum,
resulting in Minden taking the lead. Coach Schuett
said, “We didn't get a lot of shots off from the outside,
pushed the ball inside and didn't get a lot of finishes that
we would normally get.”
When the fourth quarter began, the teams were tied up
at 38-38. The game quickly became very intense as the
two teams battled back and forth to add points to their
score. Ultimately, after a tough fight, the Swedes came
up just short 51-54, making them the SWC runners-up.
Coach Schuett said, “We gave up some free throw points
that would have helped in the close game at the end. Defensively,
in the half court we weren't as disciplined as
we could have been but these are all things that we can
improve on.”
The Lady Swedes came off of the conference tournament
for a road game Monday night to meet Southern
Valley in Oxford, where they dominated the game. Allowing
the to outscore them in only one of the three quarters,
the Swedes finished strong with a 49-29 win.
The Swedes are scheduled to play the Valentine Badgers
at home on Friday, Feb. 3, starting at 5:30 p.m. They will
then face the Minden Whippets again for a regular season
game on Saturday, Feb. 4, in Minden, starting at 4:30 p.m.