Pointer girls beat Belmont in non-conference action

By John Dalton

The Mineral Point Girls’ basketball team hosted and defeated Belmont 51-39 Monday night in a non-conference game between two teams that lead their respective conferences.

Mineral Point, who is tied at 11-1 with Cuba City in the SWAL conference, jumped to an early 5-0 lead thanks to baskets by Maddy Kabat and Laci Lindsey.  Belmont, who currently leads the Six Rivers-West conference at 9-3, cut the lead to 5-4 off a 3-point play that found Morgan Freeman hit a bucket and made the free throw after she was fouled.  

The game was tight throughout most of the first half.  3-point baskets by Mineral Point’s Sophie Miller and Jadyn Schultz put the Pointers up 13-8 midway through the first half.  Belmont’s Carsyn Ramaker steal and a hoop cut the Pointer lead to 14-12.

But the Pointers pressure defense started to cause some problems in the form of turnovers for the Lady Braves and the Pointers would go on a 15-4 run to close out the half and take a 29-16 lead into the intermission.  

Belmont’s Ramaker and Kaci Riechers would hit 3-point shots early in the second half to cut into the lead, but the Pointers answered quickly when Eliza Ingwell on back-to-back possessions dribbled the ball up and found a lane for two baskets.  

Kabat and Lindsey did most of the damage for the Pointers in the second half as they combined for 16 points, those points coming from the paint or the charity stripe.  Lindsey led all scorers in the game with 17 points, Kabat had 11, and Schultz had 10.  

Riechers and Ramaker led Belmont with 9 points each. Pointer Head Coach Nick Jelle was pleased with his team’s performance and thought it was a good playoff-type game.  “Belmont’s a tough team, it was a physical game, a playoff caliber type game, they’re ranked in D5 for a reason and tonight I thought we did a nice job.  I liked our toughness and the fact that we never quit,” he said.

“We kept getting after it defensively, we had a lot of steals, and a lot of offensive rebounds, I felt the girls kept competing all night long,” he said.  “Laci was really good tonight, Maddy was tough as well, Ella didn’t score a lot tonight but defensively she does nice things.  Everyone who got minutes on the floor tonight did some good things for us.”

“This is a big win for us, it’s not a conference win or anything, but a confidence booster for us because we’ve had a lot of close games with some of these really good teams, and as of late we’ve been able to finish them and that’s what you want to do.”

Mineral Point will travel to Darlington on Friday, February 14th with tipoff scheduled for 7:30 p.m.  For video highlights of this game, you can find those on The Democrat or The Chronicle’s Facebook page.  

BOX SCORE

Mineral Point 29 – 22 – 51

Belmont         16 – 23 – 39

Mineral Point (fg-ft-tp); Laci Lindsey 7-3-17, Maddy Kabat 4-3-11, Jadyn Schultz 3-1-10, Ella Ingwell 3-0-6, Sophie Miller 1-0-3, Ava Ingwell 1-1-3, Ella Kroll 0-1-1.

3-pointers; Schultz 3, Sophie Miller 1.

Belmont (fg-ft-tp); Kaci Riechers 1-6-9, Carsyn Ramaker 4-0-9, Morgan Freeman 3-2-8, Jaelyn Leitzinger 3-1-7, Brittany Taylor 1-2-4, Lexi Riechers 0-1-1, Courtney Fritz 0-1-1.

3-pointers; K. Riechers 1, Rammer 1.