MINOT — The Firebirds ventured onto a familiar hardwood Thursday. Met with roaring crowds, red seats and a large video board in the home of the Minot State Beavers, they returned to the floor where they ended a 37-year title drought last year.
Memories.
But that’s all they are. It’s a new year, and a new season, and a new tournament. Their first matchup was against a team from the West, Dickinson Trinity. In preparation, the Firebirds got film and tips from teams like Watford City, Shiloh Christian and Des Lacs-Burlington.
“It is a little different from the West to the East. The style is a little different,” Devils Lake head coach Justin Klein said. “Their scoring has really been low out there in games.”
No. 1-seeded Devils Lake girls’ basketball (21-3) opened this year’s slate by beating the No. 8-seeded Titans (14-11) by a score of 70-50 at the Minot State Dome. The Firebirds came out hot offensively and finished strong, overcoming some issues that allowed Trinity to make it a game in the middle two quarters.
“Trinity played probably better than they have,” Klein said. “I mean, everybody said, ‘Oh, they can’t score. They don’t shoot.’ They hit seven threes. So they didn’t have an issue, and they hadn’t been here. March is goofy. Sometimes the ball goes in the hole and you can’t do anything about it.”
The Titans shot 44% from the floor and outrebounded Devils Lake 39-33. It was as close as a five-point game in the third quarter. But the Firebirds won the turnover battle 35-11, coming up with a whopping 25 steals. Tylie Brodina led Devils Lake with 23 points, while Presley Brown added 18. Devils Lake shot 40% overall (28-of-70).
It brought the Firebirds two wins away from replicating last year’s heroics.
“We’ve gotta be more consistent in finishing,” Klein said. “We shot 70 shots. And our style is like that, where we’re gonna get more shots up on another team because of where we play. But at the end of the day, we did score 70 points.”
The Firebirds came out with a ton of offensive energy. Brown was getting down the floor, and Brodina was taking her three-ball attempts. After a steal by Brodina that led to a layup by Cabryn Fritel, Devils Lake led 9-0 right out of the gates.
Trinity scored its first points after taking a timeout at 5:54, with a three by Elly McAvoy. Devils Lake maintained a sizable advantage with a 7-2 stretch, fueled by Brodina’s first successful three of the night.
The Titans made two triples in the first quarter on a handful of open looks. But Devils Lake led 25-14 at the end of the first quarter, getting eight points from Brown, seven from Torri Fee and six by Brodina. Offensively, it couldn’t have been a much better start for the Firebirds.
But the scoring took a breather in the second quarter. The Titans didn’t exactly do themselves any favors, either; they went nearly four minutes without scoring. But when they did get back in the scoring column, they got back-to-back threes by Bella Kovash — fueling an 8-0 run that made it a single-digit game.
Brodina had none of that.
She made five straight layups for Devils Lake as the Titans struggled to hold onto the ball. They turned it over 16 times in the first half. The Firebirds’ lead returned to more comfortable territory at 37-22.
But Trinity had some fight left. It finished the second half on another 8-0 run. The Titans landed four triples in the second quarter — two each from Kovash and Annabel Scheeler.
Trinity went 6-of-10 from three-point range overall in the first half compared to 3-of-9 for the Firebirds. The Titans also outrebounded Devils Lake 18-13 in the half.
“We feed off of our press and our pressure,” Klein said. “But we miss a shot, we’ve gotta run back or we’ve gotta trap quick.”
Offense continued to fall stagnant for the Firebirds in the second half. For more than six minutes, they had just one field goal in the third quarter. Trinity continued chipping away, bringing it as close as 44-38.
“I thought we were fine, X’s and O’s — we just couldn’t score,” Klein said. “We couldn’t finish. I thought we went to the hole pretty well. It was just kind of a whole funk.”
Brodina showed her flash again with her third triple of the game — but then she had to exit with an apparent ankle injury. She was only lightly limping. By 6:48 in the fourth quarter, she was back in the game.
Less than a minute later, she hit another three.
It was all too reminiscent of last year, when a nearly identical series of events happened in the second game of the state tournament.
“The best thing for her was to come back in so she didn’t sit,” Klein said. “But that was a big shot at the time.”
Brodina’s three helped fuel a 9-0 run that put the game away. The Titans ran out of steam through the remainder of the fourth quarter and Devils Lake still wound up winning by 20. Brown scored eight more points in the final period.
The win advanced the Firebirds to a semifinal contest Friday at 8:15 p.m. The excitement and crowd sizes only increase with each round, playing on a full-size court under the fancy video board with TV cameras and extra media presence.
“These TV timeouts are killers. I hate them,” Klein said. “And I get it… Tonight, maybe a couple helped us, maybe made them miss a shot. But we’re doing drills and we’re conditioning for this type of stuff.”
The Firebirds’ Friday opponent is the winner of Thursday night’s Rugby vs. Thompson game. Devils Lake beat Thompson twice during the regular season. Rugby was a surprise addition to the field after beating the vaunted South Prairie-Max in the Region 1 tournament.
