BY RAEGAN NEUFELD
PHOTOS BY JESS KIRCHHOFF
After suffering a loss Monday night to Northeastern State, the Fort Hays women’s basketball team was able to bounce back with a win over Rogers State on Thursday. The Tigers (20-3, 14-3 MIAA), knocked off Rogers State 78-49 Thursday but were coming off of a flat performance the game before.
“We needed to play with more energy,” head coach Tony Hobson said. “If you ever get outrebounded by 15 in a game, like we did Monday, it’s primarily energy. We were just flat and played with no urgency. So we just wanted to play hard every play and run the floor, and the girls did a good job of that.”
Fort Hays did get off to a bit of a slow start offensively against RSU. Katie Wagner was the only Tiger who had scored after nearly 6:30, and Rogers State (10-14, 6-12 MIAA) was in the lead, 10-6. However, a 10-0 run to end the first quarter put the Tigers back on top.
From there, FHSU continued to grow the lead and were winning convincingly at halftime, 35-21. Fort Hays held a steady 14-point lead throughout much of the third quarter, and pulled completely out of reach in the last ten minutes, resulting in the final score of 78-49.
One of the biggest parts of the game for the Tigers was the points they scored in the paint. Overall, 36 points were scored off of shots from 15 feet or closer. The team also grabbed a total of 42 rebounds on the night.
“That was kind of our game, was to go after them inside, and we weren’t shooting it very well, so we had to go where we could get some good shots and then crash the boards,” Hobson said. He also credited their take-over of the game after the first quarter to getting shots inside.
Another key aspect for Fort Hays was the points scored by non-starters, which totaled 43.
“We have a nine, sometimes ten-man rotation. They’re team players, and if their assignment’s to come off the bench they do it, they play hard, and they don’t pout. That’s what it takes to have a good bench and a good team,” Hobson said.
As a team, Fort Hays shot 51.8 percent across the field and a whopping 88.9 percent from the free-throw line, missing just two the whole game.
Leading the Tigers in scoring was Olivia Hollenbeck. She had 14 points, followed by Kate Dilsaver with 12. Both players were 4-4 on free throws, as was Wagner. Whitney Randall was the third Tiger to score double-figures with 11.
Leading rebounders for the game were Jessie Sallach who had nine and Cydney Bergmann who had six. After the game, Bergmann was honored with the Cervs Distinguished Tiger Leadership Award for her community leadership and service.
This is the 11th straight season that the team has recorded 20 overall wins. Because Monday’s game against Northeastern State was a rescheduled game from earlier in the season, Fort Hays will turn around and play the RiverHawks again on Saturday, this time at home, with tip-off scheduled for 2 p.m.