The Lake Region State College women’s basketball team (18-10, 11-8) returned home with a win on Sunday, beating Miles Community College (6-22, 3-16) by a score of 50-40. It was a bounceback win after the Royals lost their last game, now giving them 15 wins in their last 19 games.
It was LRSC’s defense that won it the game, but Brooke Kleinig led with 12 points, while Tiyahna Trottier had 10. Kyla Fitzgerald and Kelsey Crossan had nine and eight rebounds, respectively.
“It’s always good to get back in the win column, especially after a loss,” head coach Ryan Clark said. “I think the season’s always full of momentum, and you never want the momentum to start going the wrong way for ya. But the group’s really resilient, came out and guarded super hard.”
The Royals had a first quarter that was emblematic of their biggest strength and weakness this season. They trailed 11-8, as both teams struggled to shoot. LRSC had four baskets by four different people, but they missed numerous three-pointers and weren’t taking advantage of their opportunities. They made just 2-of-25 threes throughout the game.
“The way they’re guarding, I can’t speak highly enough of it,” Clark said. “It’s one thing to guard really well when your offense is going really well, and it’s another thing to guard really well when your offense isn’t going as well.”
Anisah Wolf and Nicole Lillard, both coming off the bench, combined for five points at the start of the second quarter to put the Royals ahead. The teams went back and forth, with Miles getting a couple steals but also missing two critical free throws.
Kleinig tied it at 19-19, and Wolf put the Royals ahead. Lillard finished the first half by finally making LRSC’s first successful three of the game, giving it a slightly larger cushion at halftime with a 24-19 lead.
“The pace of the ball moved a lot quicker and opened up a lot more things,” Clark said. “That’s more what I wanted to see from the first quarter, is just speeding up the pace when the ball was moving.”
With two more baskets to open the second half, the Royals had an 11-0 run going. Miles landed a shot that ended the stretch, but little did the Pioneers know that that would be their only field goal of the quarter. LRSC played its best defense in the third quarter, guarding the way Clark knows it’s capable of. The Pioneers constantly struggled to get to the rim or take clean shots.
“I kept telling them at halftime and throughout the game: Stop reaching your hand in the cookie jar and getting a foul,” Clark said. “For a period there, we just guarded, showed our hands, kept in front.”
The Royals led 42-25 at the end of the third quarter, in position for a sub-40 or even sub-30 defensive performance.
But the fourth quarter had a completely different tune from the opening seconds. Miles went on an 11-0 run, trimming the seemingly comfortable lead to six.
LRSC didn’t score until a basket by Wolf with 2:40 to go. But the Pioneers only put up one field goal after that. Three straight baskets by the Royals — one by Kleinig and two by Crossan — helped seal the deal on a double-digit win.
“I’m proud of the way they responded,” Clark said. “It’s very easy in those situations to let the bleeding keep bleeding and not put a bandage over it. We didn’t do that. We dug back in. We got back to guarding.”
The Royals will play their final regular season game on Wednesday against Dawson Community College, before wrapping up the regular season next Sunday against Bismarck State College.
