Girls win at home, but upset by Cozad to end season Monday

    The CCS girls basketball team wrapped up the regular season Tuesday, Feb. 6, with a 26-23 win over Hitchcock County.
    This game wrapped up a four-game-in-five-nights marathon. The girls looked good physically, but might not have been at full strength mentally.
    The Longhorns got off to a good start, outscoring Hitchcock County 12-3 in the first quarter. That’s when it looked as if the mental fatigue set in.
    Hitchcock Co. was doing a lot of outside screening and the Longhorns would switch off on who they were defending, but when HC would work inside, the Longhorns would get too aggressive and commit a foul to send them to the line.
    Over half of Hitchcock County’s 23 points came from the free throw line. Fortunately the Falcons only shot 63% from the charity stripe.
    Starting in the second quarter, the game got very sloppy with both teams trying to run the ball. The Longhorns committed 22 turnovers and the Falcons had 31.
    The Horns went into halftime leading 15-12. In a war of fouls and turnovers, both teams could only score 11 points in the second half, giving CCS the 26-23 win.
    The Longhorns committed 21 fouls, losing Landree McNair and Abby Spicer in the fourth quarter with five fouls each.
    Landree McNair led the team in scoring with 17 and in steals with 7. Top scorer for the Falcons was Katie Jarecke with 9.
    CCS finished the regular season at 11-11.
    Monday, Feb. 12, in the first round of girls sud-districts in Gothenburg, number 5 seeded Cozad upset number 4 seeded Chase County, 39-47, to end the Longhorns season.

    Despite the Longhorns beating Cozad in the first game of the season, 50-41, the Haymakers evened the score Monday.
    The Lady Longhorns shots would not fall Monday. The Horns shot just under 25% on field goals, making just 8-29  and about 19% from three point range, knocking down just 3-16.
    Cozad’s defense kept the Longhorns on the outside, not allowing the Horns to penetrate inside for the high percentage shots. The Horns also turned the ball over 28 times, while Cozad turned it over 20 times and made nearly 50% of their two point fieldgoals.
    The Longhorns got behind right away and could never catch up. After only trailing by one at the end of the first quarter, 8-9, the Horns slipped back eight more by half, trailing 15-24.
    In the third quarter the Horns slid back two more points before finally getting things turned around in the fourth.
    Chase County doubled their output of any other quarter, putting up 16 points in the fourth, pulling within five points late in the game, but ran out of time for the comeback.
    Leading scorer for the game was Olivia Spady with 17. Spady kept the Horns in the game with some solid freethrow shooting, hitting 10-11 from the line.
    Cozad was lead by Makaia Baker and Graci Marhenke, scoring 14 and 13 respectively.
    The Longhorns are a very young team and will only lose one senior to graduation next year.