Less than a month ago, the River Falls Wildcat girls’ basketball team traveled to Eau Claire North to take on the Huskies. The Wildcats second-leading scorer, senior Kaelin Jalowitz, was accidentally elbowed in the head by a teammate in warm-ups and had a bump above her eye resembling a protruding purple eggplant. Jalowitz suffered a badly sprained ankle just minutes into the game and was on ice the rest of the game. However, that game was a one-possession game with under a minute to play with the Coach Ian Sticht's squad eventually losing by seven, 58-51.
With Jalowitz back in the line-up and the Wildcats hosting at "The Litter Box," most fans were expecting a close Big Rivers Conference game last Tuesday night.
The North Huskies vanquished those wishes within minutes after tip-off.
North scored on 11 of their first 13 possessions, with Huskie senior Elli O'Keefe draining threes and her fellow senior Hope Bushendorf knocking down old-school turn-around fade-away shots. The Huskies built a 19-5 lead just over seven minutes into the game.
"It was a big hole to dig ourselves out of," said Wildcat Head Coach Ian Sticht. "We were stuck on five points for a really long stretch."
Jalowitz scored in the lane on a nifty pass from senior Maddie Vitt at the 12:54 mark to cut the deficit to 11-5, but that was the last points River Falls would score for the next eight minutes and 47 seconds until two free throws by Jalowitz at the 4:07 mark in the first half.
"We had some good looks and good shots during that stretch," said Sticht, "but they just did not go in. We also got turnover happy to end the first half."
The Wildcats committed 15 turnovers in the first half (27 for the game). North led 31-12 at the break.
The Huskies came out howling in the second half, going on a 10-0 run to turn the game into what looked to be a route, 41-12. After a Wildcat time-out, River Falls began to scratch their way back behind a three from Jalowitz, five points from freshman Kylie Schaefer, and two threes from freshman Rylan Sticht. The sharp-shooting Sticht had a career-high 21 points against New Richmond on Feb. 6. The Wildcats, with five second-half three's, cut the 29-point deficit back to 14 with just under 11 minutes to play.
"We made a really good run," said Head Coach Sticht, "and we look up and we're still down by 14 points."
That's as close as the 'Cats would come. North used two mirror-image halves bookending runs at the beginning and end of both. The Huskies howled their way to a 64-34 win.
Jalowitz scored a team-high nine points on 3 of 12 shooting. The "Jolly Rancher" grabbed seven rebounds to go along with three blocked shots and three steals. Schaefer chipped in with seven points on a perfect 3 of 3 from the floor. The Wildcats were 7 of 25 from inside the arc and 5 of 18 from three-point land. Mattie Vitt dished out four assists on the night.
The season-long story for the Wildcats, however, has been 6'1" center Abigail Treichel. Treichel grabbed 19 rebounds against North. It was her 10th double-digit rebound effort in a row. Treichel is the second-leading rebounder in the entire state of Wisconsin, for all classes, with 304 rebounds on the year heading into Friday night’s game against Hudson. Treichel is averaging just under 14 rebounds per game and is also the team's leading scorer at 12 points per contest.
"She (Treichel) has been dominant around the basket," said Sticht, "there's no doubt about that."
The Wildcats dropped to 6-16 over-all and 5-7 in BRC play after Tuesday's loss.
