This story is sponsored by Forward Financial Bank
By Paul Lecker
MarshfieldAreaSports.com
MARSHFIELD – Slowly but surely the Marshfield girls basketball team was able to pull away from Wisconsin Rapids and eventually came out with a 67-47 victory on Friday night at Marshfield High School.
The win is the Tigers’ sixth in a row as they improve to 8-6 overall and remain in first place in the Wisconsin Valley Conference at 6-1. Rapids drops to 5-9 and 2-6 in the conference.
Marshfield pulled ahead for good at 10-8 five minutes in on a basket by Jenna Jakobi.
Meg Bryan hit four 3-pointers in the final 10 minutes of the first half for the Tigers, and Ema Fehrenbach added a basket with 32 seconds to go to give Marshfield a 36-27 at the break.
Maddie Nikolai scored nine of her 15 points and the Tigers were 16 of 19 at the free throw line in the second half as Rapids never got closer than nine.
Marshfield shot 48 percent (23 of 48) from the field, its fourth game in a row shooting better than 47 percent.
“I thought from the beginning we came out ready to go,” Marshfield coach Heidi Michaelis said. “It’s a tempo game going against (Rapids’) that zone and you have to slowly take control. We were efficient on the offensive end and better with our movement against the zone than we were the first time we played them.
“My big thing, at halftime, was defensively we were just lazy and we didn’t rebound. I challenged everyone and Maddie came out and went through three or four passing lanes to get us going, and we need everyone to do that defensively. Overall, I’m happy. We did a lot of good things and it’s a good win.”
Fehrenbach had a team-high 17 points for the Tigers.
Marshfield will play at Appleton North in a nonconference game Saturday at 3 p.m. North, which beat Marshfield by two points a WIAA Division 1 sectional final last March, is undefeated at 16-0 and ranked No. 1 in this week’s Wissports.net Division 1 state coaches poll.
The Tigers will need to continue their hot offensive play, and improve in other facets, to compete with the high-powered Lightning.
“It is little things, right now, that are keeping us from taking the next step to being ‘that’ team,” Michaelis said. “We have to take care of the ball better and rebound better. You can’t give up 18 offensive rebounds to anybody, that’s going to kill you at some point.”
Tigers 67, Raiders 47
Wisconsin Rapids 27 20 – 47
Marshfield 36 31 – 67
WISCONSIN RAPIDS (47): Kristin Hansen 0-4 0-0 0, McKenzie Wentland 0-1 0-0 0, Katy Schooley 0-0 1-2 1, Breally Kautzer 2-9 1-3 6, Hailey Wilhorn 0-0 0-0 0, Maycie Wiernik 2-6 0-0 4, Kaitlyn Hess 2-5 0-0 4, Chani Pulchinski 4-10 0-2 8, Alyssa Huglen 2-4 0-0 4, Kayla Huglen 2-5 3-4 7, Sydney Petersen 0-0 0-0 0, Maddie Paitel 5-14 0-1 13. FG: 19-54. FT: 5-12. 3-pointers: 4-15 (Paitel 3-9, Kautzer 1-1, Hess 0-1, Pulchinski 0-4). Rebounds: 33 (Paitel 6). Turnovers: 17. Fouls: 15. Fouled out: none. Record: 5-9, 2-6 Wisconsin Valley Conference.
MARSHFIELD (67): Shantel Nienast 0-0 0-0 0, Meg Bryan 4-8 0-0 12, Kadie Johnson 0-0 0-0 0, Jenna Jakobi 3-8 2-4 8, Corianne Johnson 1-3 2-2 5, Desirae Weisenberger 0-0 2-2 2, Maddie Nikolai 6-13 3-4 15, Megan Vandehey 0-0 0-0 0, Ema Fehrenbach 7-10 3-3 17, Hannah Meverden 1-4 4-4 6, Katie Osinski 0-0 0-0 0, Sophie Koehn 1-2 0-0 2. FG: 23-48. FT: 16-19. 3-pointers: 5-12 (Bryan 4-8, C. Johnson 1-3, Nikolai 0-1). Rebounds: 32 (C. Johnson 6). Turnovers: 13. Fouls: 14. Fouled out: none. Record: 8-6, 6-1 Wisconsin Valley Conference.