Basketball: Girls Upset Highlights R-P Sweeping D-E

Rushford-Peterson and Dover-Eyota had their yearly basketball series. An upset on the girls’ side was a major story. Dover-Eyota’s gals entered the game ranked #7 in Class AA, without a TRC loss, with just one loss period (to Class AAA Winona), and leading the TRC-West (8-0, 14-1). Rushford-Peterson’s girls (3-3, 8-5) ended a five-game series losing streak to D-E with a win last year and used that effort to catapult to another, bigger win over the Eagles. Joe Hatch’s girls controlled the action, only trailing early 0-2 and 6-7. R-P got past D-E’s press enough and moved the ball to get good shots. Seniors Tayler Helgemoe and Ellie Ekern combined to go 10 of 14 from the field in the first half for 26 points as R-P led 28-20 at intermission. Nadia Happel then scored R-P’s first eight second half points, stoking a 36-21 Trojan lead. D-E never recovered. Every time the Eagles got close; R-P responded. After cutting the lead to five (46-41) with under six left Ekern hit a baseline jumper to make it 48-41. With it 49-42, an in-bound play got Helgemoe a good look and the lead was bolstered 51-42 with 2:24 left. With it 51-46 in the final minute, Ekern hit four straight free throws to make it 55-46. Helgemoe followed with two more makes seconds later. The entire second half was a free throw shooting contest. The teams shot 40 freebies in the stanza. But the Trojans held off the Eagles for their best win in a long time, the rare unranked-over-top-10, up-a-class, win. The final was 57-49. Helgemoe (21 pts, 8-10 FGs, 10 rebs, 4 stls, 3 blks) and Ekern (21 pts, 6-9 FGs, 7-7 FTs) combined to hit 14 of 19 shots and score 42 of R-P’s 57 points. Nadia H. (8 pts) Cassandra Boyum (5 pts, 8 rebs) helped. Torryn Schneider had just two points (1-11 FGs) but a team best six assists. Isabel Duellman (15 pts) and Nora Pristash (10 pts) made double figures for the Eagles, who had just one player shoot 50% or better. Miranda Palmby had just six points. She scored 27 versus Chatfield and 21 versus Caledonia. R-P out-shot D-E 19 of 51 (37%) to 16 of 47 (34%) including notched a plus-15-point edge from deep. R-P was 6 of 22 (27%), D-E 1 of 13 (8%). The Eagles were plus-three at the stripe as each team took a lot of freebies, D-E 16 of 28 (57%), R-P 13 of 22 (59%), making them a semi-adequate clip. R-P improved to 4-3 in the TRC, 9-5 overall. On the guys’ side, it was all R-P. The Trojans posted another game of at least 13 made threes, hitting 13 of 34 (38%). Chris Drinkall’s group, ranked #18 in Class A, easily handled the Eagles by 81-58 final. It was their seventh game scoring 80-plus-points (6-1). Dawson Bunke (22 pts, 4-14 threes, 7 rebs) led the offensive charge but Cayden Lea turned in an impressive point-assist double-double (10 pts, 4 rebs, 12 asts). Cole Thompson (16 pts, 3-8 threes) and Carson Johnson (16 pts, 6 rebs) also hit double-figures. Creighton Hoiness chipped in 9 points. R-P (3-2, 11-3) won its third in a row and eighth in nine games. Their only loss in the span is to #2 in Class A Dawson-Boyd.