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Dodgeville's girls basketball team learned how adversity can set in at any time in their opening 44-38 loss to Evansville Tuesday.
The Dodgers lost their returning scoring leader from last year when Marley Busch went down with a ankle injury at the 12:39 mark of the first half. She is listed as "we will see" for Friday's game with a very strong Mineral Point team.
Four sophomores and four freshmen take up a good part of the playing time for this year's Dodgers squad. When it was over, sophomore Maggie White led the team in scoring with 10 points and freshman Olivia Forsyth came off the bench to add eight.
Sophomore Ava Brandenberg led the Blue Devils with 17 points and junior Maria Messling added 13.
Both teams started slowly with the score only 4-2 in favor of the Blue Devils six minutes into the game. Later Evansville pulled away until the Dodgers put on a run at the end but came up short.
"We are young with a lot of new kids but I liked our effort," said Dodgeville coach Josh Busch. "We played hard but we could not get our shots to fall. Even though, I saw a lot of positive things and we found out what we need to work on.
Evansville did not surprise the Dodgers Busch said.
"They have some good players and overall we did a good job against them," Busch said. "Again, we just did not score."
With four sophomores and four freshmen seeing a lot of court time Busch realizes there will be a learning curve.
"We will have our ups and downs but I am happy with what I see," the coach said.
He said he was pleased with how Maggie White asserted herself even though he knows she would like to score more.
He also said McKenna Reilly did a good job taking care of the basketball and eliminated some poor passing he saw last season.
"McKenna stayed out of bad situations," he said.
The Dodgers will be waiting to see how Marley Busch's ankle comes around as they prepare for the Pointers in a Parents Night game Friday.
"We will be working on our defensive rotations and on getting our shots to fall," Busch said.
SCORE BY HALVES
Evansville 27 17 44
Dodgeville 14 24 38

BOX SCORE
EVANSVILLE 44: (fg-ft-tp)
Hazard 2-1-7, Messling 3-7-19, Hermanson 2-2-6, Brandenberg 5-7-17, Vogl 0-1-1 Totals 12-18/28-44. Fouls-18
DODGEVILLE 38: O. Forsyth 1-6-8, Garthwaite 0-2-2, R. Forsyth 0-2-2, Reilly 2-0-4, White 4-2-10, Busch 0-0-0, Kitelinger-Foster 1-1-4, Weigel 1-0-2, Blume 1-0-2. Totals 13-11/18-38. Fouls-21. Fouled out-R. Forsyth
3 point goals:
Evansville (2)-Hazard 2
Dodgeville (1)-Kitelinger-Foster 1