Doane uses pressure to down Mines

By Padraic Duffy, Journal staff | Sunday, November 16, 2008

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RAPID CITY — When Doane College decided to turn the pressure up on Saturday afternoon, South Dakota Mines wilted — leading to a 77-58 women’s basketball win at Goodell Gymnasium in the Howard Johnson South Dakota Mines Classic.

The Hardrockers opened the game with a 6-0 lead and looked to be in good shape, but the Tigers cranked up their full-court press and ran away with the game from there. The Tigers forced 19 first-half turnovers by Mines and had a 43-23 lead heading into the locker room at halftime.

“That’s something that we’ve talked about over the last few practices and games,” Doane head coach Tracee Fairbanks said. “We just felt like our defense needed to be a little bit more intense and tenacious and I thought we did a much better job of that yesterday and today.”

The Tigers dropped a close game to Black Hills State, 67-64, on Friday night.

Doane had six players with at least one steal in the first half, led by Brittany Lurz’s four. The Tigers finished the game with 22 steals, led by Lurz with five. Six different Doane players had at least two steals.

“I thought they exploited our youth,” Mines head coach Barb Felderman said. “We got a little frazzled there and it kind of snowballed on us.”

While the Hardrockers seem to be having a hard time so far this season finding a ballhandler to replace all-American Melanie Vedvei and all-DAC performer Jennie Malone, Felderman isn’t looking at any particular position to improve. She wants them all to chip in.

“It’s frustrating, but it is correctable,” Felderman said. “This is something that we’ve worked on in practice and seem to have a handle on, but then we go out and commit the same mistakes. We just need to keep working on it. It’s not only the guards, it’s a whole team effort. We need to get some different action and start moving differently. It’s not just the guards.” 

Felderman pointed to the 35-34 edge for the Hardrockers in scoring in the second half and the play of forwards Bethany Holyoak and Jerika Ihnen down low as positives, but on a night where the Hardrockers were out-rebounded 47-30, shot just 31.6 percent and committed 30 turnovers, there wasn’t much else to salvage.

“It’s a wild horse we’re on right now,” Felderman said.

Holyoak and Ihnen each scored 13 points to lead Mines. Ihnen also had seven rebounds to pace the Hardrockers.

Nicole and Lindsay Anderson each scored 14 points to lead Doane. Cheryl Braithwait added 11 points and forward Amy Fox had a nice all-around game with nine points, nine rebounds, two blocks and four steals for the Tigers.

Mines (3-3 overall) will be off until Nov. 28 when they head to the Hastings Thanksgiving Classic. They will play Hastings College that Friday and get another crack at Doane (4-1) on Saturday.