BILLINGS — The conventional wisdom is teams are supposed to put losses in the rearview mirror. Billings Central senior Lily Bland said the Rams didn’t exactly do that Friday night at First Interstate Arena at MetraPark.
With the season’s first loss “in the back of their minds,” the Rams got back into the win column with a 53-36 win over Hardin in a Southeast A meeting of two top-5 squads.
Billings Central came into the game as the No. 3 team in the Class A 406mtsports.com rankings, while Hardin sat fifth. But once the Rams used an 8-0 run at the start of the second quarter for a 14-point lead, the gap between the teams seemed larger than two spots.
The bounce back from last week’s two-point loss to Miles City is just what the Rams needed, Bland said.
“It pushes us to be better every day,” she said. “And, I mean, hopefully is doesn’t happen again. We’re just going to keep working and grow every day.”
Bland was part of another balanced scoring effort for the Rams, who improved to 9-1 and 5-0 in conference play. While the team’s season-leading scorer, Kamryn Reinker, was held to nine points, three others hit double figures.
Coral Old Bull scored 13 points, Annika Stergar finished with 10 points, as did Bland, whose point total all came in the first half. Old Bull scored 10 of her points in the second half as the Rams shared the ball well, perhaps a bit too much for coach Jetton Ailes’ liking.
“We try to get them to think with an attack mentality, and sometimes we get a little pass happy,” Ailes said. “We’ve got to think ‘score.’ Sometimes you get too many touches on the ball trying to make the pretty play instead of the simple play. But this is a group that knows when we need something they step up at the right time.”
What the Rams couldn’t question was their defense.
Like Reinker (14.2 points per game) on the Rams’ side, Hardin leading scorer Aiyanna Big Man had trouble reaching her team-high 13.8 points-per-game average. She finished with six points, leaving Katerena Morrison and her 16 points to try and fill the void.
The problem for the Bulldogs (9-3, 2-3) was no one else reached double figures, and their 36 points turned out to be a season-low.
“We’re going to have to find a sense of urgency, collectively as a team, and play consistently for four quarters instead of one quarter or two minutes here and there,” Hardin coach Cindy Farmer said. “Until we do that, it’s going to be hard to score or keep the other team from scoring.”
The Rams led 15-11 after the first quarter when Bland hit a runner in the lane just before the buzzer. She had eight first-quarter points, while Morrison had all 11 for Hardin.
Morrison scored just five points the rest of the game, while the Rams held the Bulldogs under 10 points for each of the remaining three quarters to beat Hardin for the second time this season.
“Defense is always the focus for Billings Central,” Bland said. “We always work on it in practice and we hang our hat on the defensive end.”
Article by Mike Scherting, 406 Sports
