Ellsworth’s girls’ basketball team has continued to put in hard work to improve their standing in the extremely competitve Middle Border Conference.

“The previous week, we had a little more practice time and we focused on getting lots of shots up, reviewing defensive principles and playing as a unit on offense. We try to maintain our strength training as well, so that cuts into our gym time some. Whenever we get some consistent days in a row, we also work on press-break and identifying special pressure defenses.

“I like that Sophomore Hayley Bach played as well as she did. She had her best game as a varsity player, scoring 20 points, snaring 4 rebounds and playing very solid on defense overall. We played a top team in our league to a virtual deadlock for one half and led a good share of that time. I think our defensive principles were adhered to and we also saw another way that people will attack our defense and made the necessary adjustments,” Coach Jason Janke said about his team’s recent action.

The Panthers trailed by five going into the half against Osceola. Junior Autumn Earney led the comeback in the second half after scoring 21 points in the opening stanza before finishing with 36. Kaitlyn Nugent, a senior, scored nine and junior Lily Puhrmann added another six.

“We lost last night in overtime, so we're down to 4 regular-season games left,” Janke said after the close loss to Osceola. Janke continued, “We're going to compete each night and see if we can get things to go our way late. For the most part, when we're in games late, things go our way, last night being an exception. We still have a chance to be in that top 4 in the MBC which was a major goal of ours when the season began. That did not look realistic for a while, but it's within reach now and we'd like to meet that goal. Obviously, the two non-conference games will do a lot for our seeding meeting (Turtle Lake is prior to our Feb 15 meeting) and our confidence going into the post-season (River Falls leads the BRC and comes to Ellsworth on Feb 18).”

The Panthers aren’t done just yet, though. In the game Janke mentioned against Turtle Lake, the Panthers annihilated the non-conference opponent, 75-40 before losing at Prescott, 68-55.

“While we have done some things that our program has not seen done in about a decade, we are working hard to go a little further in the 2019-20 season toward making Ellsworth Girls basketball a stronger program,” Janke said proudly.

Photos by Jon Claesson.