Quick starts fuel Raiders’ season sweep of Eagles

MEDFORD GIRLS BASKETBALL

First-half shutouts are something Greg Klapatauskas has seen many times as Medford’s football defensive coordinator. Now the girls basketball head coach, he almost saw his Raiders pull one off on Tuesday.

A banked in 3-pointer by Hadley Olivotti with 2:29 left marked the only basket Northland Pines made in 19 attempts in the first half as Medford, despite being held scoreless as well for the last six minutes, took a 24-3 lead into the locker room and coasted from there to a 58-26 win at Raider Hall.

The teams met for the second time in a week and both times Medford got out to dominant starts behind its full-court defensive pressure as well as its half-court zone. In Tuesday’s game, the Raiders debuted a 1-3-1 that stymied the Eagles for the first 14-plus minutes.

Medford improved to 6-2 overall and 4-1 in the Great Northern Conference, good for a second-place tie with Lakeland, who completed a season sweep of defending champion Rhinelander on Tuesday. The Raiders and Thunderbirds sit a half-game behind 4-0 Mosinee, who the Raiders have a crucial rematch with Friday in Mosinee at 7:15 p.m. The Indians beat Medford 64-52 at Raider Hall back on Dec. 21.

“I think we’re starting to feel comfortable with a zone,” head coach Greg Klapatauskas said of the near goose-egg in the first half. “The girls looked good. They played hard, we were hustling, we were boxing out, we got almost every loose ball it felt like. We put a lot of ball pressure on them, made them shoot from the outside and created a bunch of turnovers just by being scrappy.”

While the Eagles were shooting blanks throughout the first half, Medford opened up a 24-point lead behind five points from Autumn Krause, four apiece from Bryn Fronk, Marissa Fronk and Rynn Ruesch and 3-pointers from Lydia Pernsteiner and Martha Miller. The Raiders had trouble finishing at the rim in the last six minutes and wound up just nine of 37 from the field in the half, preventing them from building a much bigger lead.

“If we make five or six more shots or get toward upper 40s for a shooting percentage, we’re going to be tough,” Klapatauskas said. “I told them that. This is our identity. We’re going to play good defense, we’re going to press. We’re finding out who we are. Now we have to be the team that finishes.”

Both offenses did better in the second half and the Eagles upped their energy by employing some full-court pressure defensively that made some things happen. Ten of Medford’s 14 turnovers came in the second half.

In the half, Krause added six more points, including a 3-pointer to finish with a team-high 11 points. Ruesch put in three buckets to finish in double figures with 10.

Totals were balanced after that as Bryn Fronk had nine points, Marissa Fronk finished with seven, Miller hit another 3-ball to finish with six points and Laurissa Klapatauskas and Katie Brehm scored four points apiece. Pernsteiner and Sophie Brost added three points each. Sophomore Hope Faude scored her first varsity point with a second-half free throw.

Medford made 12 of 26 shots from the field in the half, while Pines was a muchimproved 11 of 22. Carly Huelskamp led Pines (1-5, 1-7) with seven points.

Krause led Medford with nine rebounds. Brost and Ruesch each had six, while Pernsteiner and Marissa Fronk both grabbed five. Krause had three assists, while the Fronk sisters each had two. Ruesch and Marissa Fronk had four steals apiece.

Medford forced the Eagles into 28 turnovers and outrebounded them 46-29. The Raiders had 25 offensive rebounds which was another good news/bad news kind of stat.

“The fact that the shots we were getting and taking were almost all in the paint was good,” Klapatauskas said. “It wasn’t like we were missing a bunch of jumpers. We were missing shots in the paint, which is both encouraging and discouraging at the same time that those are the ones we’re missing.”

With four straight wins since the first Mosinee loss, the Raiders go into Friday’s rematch confident they can produce a better result. “We’re definitely clicking a lot better right now than we were when we played them the first time,” Klapatauskas said. “We just have to keep our heads, finish to the rim, keep attacking.”

After Friday’s rematch at Mosinee, the Raiders will make up an early-season postponement at Rhinelander on Tuesday before hosting Lakeland in a key GNC rematch Jan. 15.

Medford 63, Pines 45

In the teams’ Dec. 30 meeting at Eagle River, Medford quickly jumped ahead 18-0 and, despite some turnover issues at times, was never seriously threatened in a 63-45 win over Pines.

The Raiders overcame 27 turnovers by forcing 32 and scoring 26 points off of them. They also scored 17 transition points while building a cushion the Eagles simply weren’t going to dig out of.

Marissa Fronk led the way with 17 points, seven steals and two rebounds. Krause scored a season-high 15 points, grabbed a season-high nine rebounds and added six assists and four steals. Brehm scored a season-high 10 points and added two rebounds.

The Raiders scored eight points in about 30 seconds to start the game. Krause drilled a left-wing 3-pointer, Ruesch rolled off an inbound screen and got an easy lay-in and a backcourt steal turned into a Marissa Fronk 3-pointer.

Fronk added a free throw and then a steal and score off a well-executed backcourt trap by Ruesch and Bryn Fronk to make it 11-0. Miller scored in the post, Krause drained another 3-pointer and Ruesch hit a short jumper in the lane before the Eagles finally got on the board.

Medford’s lead in the first half got as high as 21 at 28-7 before the Raiders settled for a 32-16 advantage at the half.

The lead gradually got back to 21 at 53-32 in the second half before Pines went on a 9-0 run to get within 53-41 on a Nora Gremban 3-pointer. But Brehm sank two bonus free throws and Marissa Fronk scored off a well-executed pick and roll with Ruesch to restore order for the Raiders. Ruesch assisted on a Klapatauskas basket and scored her own basket to push the lead back to 61-41.

Ruesch had a solid game with eight points on four-of-six shooting, three rebounds, four steals, two assists and a blocked shot. Bryn Fronk finished with five points, six rebounds, four assists and three steals. Klapatauskas had four points and four assists. Pernsteiner had a late hoop and Brost had three rebounds.

Medford collected 21 steals in the win, outrebounded the Eagles 33-29 and shot a respectable 46.3% from the field (25 of 54).

Gremban led Northland Pines with 16 points.