Lady Trojans earn back-to-back victories

At Troy on Friday night, the Lady Trojans maintained control throughout in their conference matchup with Eureka and earned a 38-27 victory.  

Troy’s game-plan going into the match was to not let Eureka’s all-state caliber player Amanda Peterson beat them. “If the other girls beat us that was something we were going to live with, but we really focused on her as much as we could and kind of gambled a little bit on that and it worked out,” Troy coach Justin Young said.

Young said Peterson is the second-leading scorer in the district, but the Lady Trojans were able to hold her to five points. Running a 2-3-zone defense most of the night, Troy relied on their guards to pressure Eureka from the free-throw line out. Young said, “Allie Brown had a solid performance. She may have only had eight points, but she had several defensive steals and some tipped balls to really contribute to our win.”

Freshman Allie Coldwell led the Lady Trojans in scoring, tallying half of Troy’s total points. “When everything breaks down, it’s nice having a player like her,” Young said.

Young said Aurora Becquart had a dominating game rebounding, pulling down 18 in the game. “When someone controls the boards like that, good things are going to come from it,” Young said.

“Offensively, we were patient. We handled their pressure, we didn’t take rushed shots like we did last time we faced them. Instead, we worked the ball around and the girls knocked down some shots when they needed to,” Young said.    

The two teams will meet again Tuesday in Eureka (2-6, 6-12) in a district play-in game. The winner will advance to the District 7-B tournament Saturday. All four teams from the tournament advance to the Western B Divisional.

On Saturday the Lady Trojans traveled to St. Ignatius and picked up another victory, the first two-game winning streak for Troy this season.

Allie Coldwell was retired to the bench after twisting her knee early in the game. “It doesn’t look to be anything serious, but it gave us a good enough scare that we decided to just shut her down,” Young said.

Troy led by two points at halftime, but outscored Mission in the second half, 26-13. Young said the team came out in the third quarter and played with a lot of fire.

Freshman post-player Aurora Becquart tallied a game-high 18 points for the Trojans. “The effort she put in from end to end was really kind of a break-out weekend for her. That was cool to see,” said Young.

 Freshman Kaitlyn Downey stepped in after Coldwell went out and contributed 15 points in only three quarters.

“It was good to see how our team stepped up after losing Coldwell and grinded out a win after an emotional game the night before,” said Young.

The coach said he would talk with Coldwell and her parents to decide if she can play in the next game, but they will approach it like she won’t be able to play. “We’re a solid team all around and if we have Coldwell then that’s just gravy on the potatoes,” Young said.

With the regular season now over, Young said he wishes he had another month of coaching to get the team firing on all cylinders. “The best thing about this season is every weekend got better, even if the scoreboard didn’t reflect that. As far as team goals, we did what we really wanted to do and it took us until almost the last game to do it. We won a district game during the regular season.” Young said it had been at least five years since that happened last.

When the Lady Trojans’ season comes to an end they will lose Olivia Thomas, Taylor Brown and Jaelyn Kelso to graduation. Young said they have provided critical leadership for his youthful team.

Young said no matter what happens in their play-in game it’s been a great season. But his team certainly isn’t ready to call it quits yet. The Lady Trojans will travel to Eureka on Tuesday for a 7 p.m. game. “If Eureka would have beaten us, they would have automatically gone to divisionals and wouldn’t have had to face us again,” Young said.

The winner of the Troy-Eureka game will face Plains, while the loser’s season will be over. The winner will then play in a seeding tournament in Columbia Falls. Kalispell will host the divisional tournament and state will be held in Great Falls.

Troy Lady Trojans (46)

Aurora Becquart 18, Allie Coldwell 2, Kaitlyn Downey 15, Sami Rohrich 2, Allie Brown 9.

Mission Bulldogs (31)

Irene Lopez 13, Jordyn Eichert 7, Trinity Lewandowski 11.

Troy     12 8 11 15_ 46

Mission 11 7 4 9_  31

Friday, Feb. 13

Troy Lady Trojans (38)

Aurora Becquart 3, Taylor Brown 3, Allie Coldwell 19, Kaitlyn Downey 3, Sami Rohrich 2, Allie Brown 8.

Eureka Lions (27)

Charity Parson 2, Courtney Lener 4, Rachel Pacella 6, Amanda Peterson 5, Stacy Cooper 7, Evynn Their 2, Caty Conbeirs 1.

Troy     7 12 9 10_ 38

Eureka 5 12 6  4_ 27