NC Thunder rains down on Tigers

There was a Lake Region Conference girls basketball showdown on Tuesday, January 17 in Ipswich and the visiting North Central Thunder would defeat the hometown Tiger girls 44-20.

The visiting Thunder had jumped ahead 4-0 thanks to two straight baskets from Ella Batie and the Thunder would then be up 6-0 thanks to a Brittney Frickson steal layup. However Ipswich would then get on the scoreboard with a Karlie Gohl trey. But the visiting team then quickly earned its first double-figure lead at 14-4 later in the quarter with a pair of accurate free throws from Frickson. But Ipswich would receive three straight points from Marley Guthmiller for a temporary 14-7 seven-point Tiger deficit. But the Thunder would indeed signal their intentions with an early eight-point second-quarter run capped by Frickson's steal layup for a 22-7 NC lead at that stage of the contest. The Tigers would end that Thunder surge with a basket from Quincy Olivier.

But the Thunder would still lead 28-11 at intermission and would then go ahead 42-13 with a quarter left.

And after that it would only be a matter of the exact victory margin by the Thunder.

There were at least two reasons why the Thunder offensively accomplished all this that evening and you could probably guess them. Frickson would indeed lead her team, and all scorers for that matter, with 16 points. (She was perfect at the charity stripe going 8-8 there.) Their second highest scorer would be Batie also in double-figures with 12 points. And Jenisa Jacobs ended up with eight points including their only trey, followed by Amree Vander Vorst with four points and Lily Beadle and Kaitlyn Hoerner each with a basket.

Ipswich responded with seven points apiece from Wald including that trey and Guthmiller. Next would be Gohl with four points that featured their remaining trey. Olivier had two points.

The Thunder were able to total 17 field goals including that trey and were 9-12 in free throw attempts. Ipswich finished with eight baskets including a trey and shot 2-7 in free throw chances.

Unofficially the Thunder garnered 24 rebounds, led by Batie with seven and Hoerner with four. Ipswich countered with 26 boards paced by Olivier with nine and Kaylin Onken with five boards.

The Thunder were extremely active on the defensive end of the court as well with 26 Tiger turnovers that included 18 steals. (Frickson would finish with six steals and Jacobs, five.) And the Thunder only sustained 17 turnovers themselves.