Saints slog through for 41-19 win over Huskies

By Kristi Nixon

NASHUA — First, the good news: The Saint girls’ basketball team held Nashua-Plainfield without a field goal for almost 15 minutes midway through this Top of Iowa East game.

The bad news: St. Ansgar struggled offensively as well, but still managed to pull out the 41-19 victory at Nashua on Monday, Dec. 12.

That had to do with the Saints’ defensive efforts.

“Defensively, very good,” coach Scott Cakerice said. “We’ve got some kids sick, some kids not healthy injury-wise – it’s hurting us a little bit because we can’t press like we do. But, we’ll get healthy and get after it.

“Amelia Porisch played in the first half and then didn’t . . . wasn’t feeling well. Addison Tabbert has a groin injury.”

N-P went from the 5:43 mark of the second quarter until 3:25 in the fourth quarter without a basket. The Huskies did, however, score three points in the interim on free throws in the fourth quarter, but the Saints held them scoreless in the third quarter.

But the Saints didn’t fare much better, shooting just 23.9 percent from the field, 0-for-11 from beyond the three-point line and going almost six full minutes in the third without a basket until one of Madison Hillman’s scores, who led both teams with 15 points.

“We haven’t shot the ball well in the last couple of games,” Cakerice said. “When you put in the basket even at a 40 percent clip, we’d have scored 65 points tonight. We had some good looks.

“We’ll keep plugging away, all you can ask for. And some of it was playing at the level of who we were playing . . . can’t go to that level, have to be where we want to be. It’s hard to know and understand that.”

The full story appears in the Dec. 21 print and e-editions of the Enterprise Journal