Tylie Brodina (Photo by Cameron Carlson)
DEVILS LAKE — The Firebirds will bring a 2-2 record into region play.
In the first half of Tuesday’s game, no Firebird scored more than seven points. In the second half, Devils Lake girls’ basketball went more than five minutes without a field goal.
Yet Devils Lake still managed a balanced scoring attack in taking down Rugby (3-1) by 28 points at the Devils Lake Sports Center on Tuesday. The final was 68-40.
“Our scoring was there,” Firebirds head coach Justin Klein said. “I thought we did a pretty nice job, other than, I thought, our outside shooting. Tylie [Brodina] had two, and Presley [Brown] had one, but that’s all we had from outside.”
Brodina led Devils Lake with 22 points, fueled by a late run in the third quarter. The junior is averaging 19.25 points per game.
She helped the Firebirds grab their second straight victory after an 0-2 start.
“I think we just moved the ball good as a team, and that our transition allowed us to get some extra points,” Brodina said. “And I think just our transition overall helped us get the win.”
Senior starters Presley Brown and Mia Elsperger both got off to quick starts. They scored seven and six points, respectively, in the first quarter.
But neither scored in the second quarter. Brodina also hadn’t quite gotten going yet. Devils Lake needed some help — and Emma Hofstad and Tenley Triepke provided that.
The Firebirds’ depth situation is in a bit of limbo right now. Dottie Goss is still recovering from an injury, and there’s been a sickness going around to players like Hofstad, Brown and Brynlee Wolf. Riley Schmiess and Raeleigh Myklebust were added to bolster the varsity group on Tuesday.
It continues to be a significantly different-looking team from last year.
“I think just our effort and our attitude, we’ve been just working harder every day at practice,” Brodina said. “Losing six seniors is kind of hard, so I think just working hard has allowed us to win some games.”
Hofstad, who started in the first two games of the season, didn’t play last week against Bottineau. On Tuesday, she came off the bench and scored seven points in the first half.
Triepke added five in the second quarter. After Rugby trimmed Devils Lake’s lead to 25-17, the Firebirds finished the half on a 13-0 run to give themselves some breathing room.
“Triepke did a really nice job coming off the bench, taking the ball to the hole,” Klein said. “And Hofstad did a nice job tonight playing defense and boxing out, and had eight points there. She got a couple buckets to finally go.”
Triepke later scored six in the fourth quarter once the game was out of reach. Her 11 points ranked third on the team.
The freshman Triepke is a first-year varsity player and a starter on junior varsity. Hofstad, meanwhile, only got limited varsity minutes last season as a freshman.
Brodina and Brown, as the most experienced of the bunch, have helped ease some of these newer players into their roles.
“I think we’re both really good leaders,” Brodina said. “And we just show them what they need to do and what spots they need to go in, so that allows them to get in good position and help out our team.”
Starting in Hofstad’s place during the two-game winning streak has been Jenae Martinson. She burst onto the scene with 15 points against Bottineau, but was limited to three points on Tuesday.
Martinson, the younger sister of some other successful Martinsons in Devils Lake basketball history, is finally getting a chance to start.
“That’s a senior who knows our system and knows what to do,” Klein said. “She’s kind of had to sit back behind a bunch of good players and a bunch of good guards the last few years. So she’s feeling comfortable, I think, in that role. And I like her strength. She runs the court real well. Defensively, we still want to kind of get her to be one of the defensive stoppers and go after their best player. So we’re still working on that a little bit. And that’s going to take some time, to figure out how to guard some of the better players in the region.”
Brown, with a three-pointer in the first quarter, hit a triple for the second straight game.
Brown is almost exclusively a post player, but she’s started to add some long-range to her game.
“She wants to shoot more, but we like her at the rim more,” Klein said. “She’s a good slasher and has a good head fake, and strong. So we like her down low, and finishing in the paint is her strength. … Those three-pointers coming from her, they’re kind of bonuses. We’ll take them.”
Late in the first half, Brown took an elbow to the nose.
She exited before returning in the second half, wearing No. 33 instead of 21. She had to change her jersey because blood got on it. But she was able to jump back in smoothly.
Rugby didn’t score in the second half until more than two minutes in. It ended a 15-0 Devils Lake run, making it 40-19.
Rugby seventh-grader Ann McNeff had six off the bench in the third quarter. She led the Panthers with nine overall. Devils Lake kept Rugby’s big players to a minimum. Leading scorer Avery Santjer only had eight points overall and two in the second half.
Rugby’s starters made just three total field goals in the latter half.
“I thought we did a nice job mixing up our defenses,” Klein said. “We played some zone, and we did some trapping. Their guards are young, and they had some trouble with our traps. I thought we did a nice job in the half-court rotating, which is what we’ve been working on a little bit because we don’t have the players right now, or the depth, or the physical strength to go full-court and rotate kids in.”
Devils Lake went 8-for-12 from the free throw line in the third quarter. It made 18-of-27 overall. But the Firebids’ first field goal of the third quarter didn’t come until the 2:48 mark.
From there, though, Brodina wound up scoring 12 in the quarter. She got open down the court for easy layups.
She added her second triple of the game in the fourth quarter.
“I think sometimes I just gotta not rush my shots,” Brodina said. “And then when my teammates get me open, that helps a lot to score.”
Brown scored five in the third quarter to finish second on the team with 12 points overall.
The Firebirds are still awaiting the return of Goss, who practiced Monday but was still feeling sore. Klein said it’s “doubtful” she’ll play Thursday when Devils Lake hosts No. 2 Carrington.
Being a region foe, the Firebirds know what to expect from the Cardinals.
“They play really hard defense,” Brodina said. “So I guess we’ve got to pre-game for that tomorrow and get ready for Thursday. So it should be a good game.”
Barring any weather cancellations, the teams from last year’s Region 2 championship will meet again.
“They’ve got good shooters. Good set shooters,” Klein said. “They play hard. They play kind of like Rugby. They’re going to get up in your face and push you full-court. They had a tough loss last night by one in a low-scoring game [to Benson County], so we’re going to have to get pressure on their guards and make sure we rotate well and make sure they take some tough shots. … When they get going and they score points, it’s because they’re taking set shots that are wide open. They’re moving the ball. They do a nice job playing as a team, and they do some things really fundamentally well. So we’ve got to take their tendencies away and make them take tough shots. That’s what I’ve seen on Carrington.”
