Demons fall in defensive battle

SIGOURNEY - Two very even teams played a high school girls basketball game Monday. The winner would be determined in the final seconds. One team scored on an out-of-bounds play and one team turned the ball over on an out-of-bounds play.

Ryleigh Leonard swished a 3-pointer from the corner to give Sigourney a 31-29 victory over Washington in a non-conference game.

Neither team ever lead by more than three points.

'These two teams play 10 times, I bet they go five and five in those games,” Sigourney coach Zach Tremmel said.

It was 13-11 for the home team after the first quarter and neither team scored for 4 minutes of the second quarter. It was 16-15 for Sigourney at the half.

The Demons scored the first four points of the second half and led 22-21 starting the final stanza.

Sigourney scored first and the teams traded buckets until Haylee Wilson got a rebound and putback for a 29-28 Washington lead with under a minute remaining.

Sigourney called two timeouts before Megan Stuhr inbounded the ball to Leonard.

'We wanted (Isabel) Bailey to help everywhere else,” Washington coach Shannon Rugg said. 'They took advantage of what we were doing, so I guess that is my fault.”

'That is just the set we run when we are under our hoop,” Tremmel said. 'We wanted to go to the post where we could get a one-on-one look, but they were helping in the post and that left her wide open. To her credit, she knocked it down. That was huge. Megan ran through her reads, she saw her wide open and gave it to her.”

For Leonard, who wears No. 33, it was her only basket of the game and it came with 18 seconds left.

'I told them during the timeout that we were not going to guard 33,” Rugg said. 'She made the shot. It is what it is.”

'A senior knocked down a big shot that she is going to remember for a long time,” Tremmel said.

Washington never got off a final shot. Rugg was yelling for a timeout that was finally granted with just under six seconds left.

'That's part of the game,” he said. 'The crowd was loud and that kind of thing will happen.”

The Demons inbounded the ball and called another timeout with just under two seconds left.

The next inbounds play resulted in a bad pass.

'We just made too many mistakes,” Rugg said. 'We could not execute properly. We will have to fix that in practice.”

No player on either team reached double figures in scoring.

Stuhr had nine points and Addison Six scored nine for Washington.

'As everybody had to have seen offensively, both teams really struggled, big time” Trammel said. 'But both teams busted their butts on the defensive end and forced tons of turnovers. It was an ugly game but it was a fun game.”

Kaylee Weber scored eight for the home team while Bailey had six and Kira Ropp five for the Demons.

'We are 4-0 and it is strictly because of our defense,” Trammel said. 'Nobody has scored over 30 on us yet.”

Washington's lowest point total had been 37.

'Defensively, they took us out of our game,” Rugg said. 'Part of that is what they were doing, but some of it was our own undoing.”

The Demons' record is 3-3.

'Some of their girls that were taller, we did not think they could shoot well, so we gave them some space when they would go outside,” Trammel said. 'I thought we did a great job defending the post. We played smart and avoided the big foul trouble.”

'There is a lot of stuff we are going to continue to work on,” Rugg said. 'We are going to get better and it's not going to be from a lack of effort. Games in December are learning experiences. We are learning a lot.

'We had a nice heart-to-heart afterwords and we will see what happens. We have the pieces we need to be a good basketball team. It is just whether or not we can go out and actually do it during a game situation. We will get there. The girls just need some confidence in themselves and in each other.”