The Juneau-Douglas girls basketball team lost its starting point guard on Thursday but won the game.<\/p>\n
Starting guard Kallen Hoover left just three minutes into Thursday\u2019s contest against Soldotna after suffering a broken nose, head coach Lesslie Knight said, following the Crimson Bears 44-41 victory over the Stars during the first round of the Kenai River Challenge at Kenai High School.<\/p>\n
With only eight players making the trip due to budget cuts, each player had little choice but to do extra in order to replace their floor leader. Some big help came from an unexpected place.<\/p>\n
Freshman point guard Erica Hurtte led JDHS in scoring with 11 points in her high school basketball debut, with six coming in the final quarter. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe have three freshmen in our top eight,\u201d Knight said of her young but hungry team. \u201cWe rely a lot on Kallen (Hoover) for direction, and we need others to step up.<\/p>\n
Knight said Hoover didn\u2019t want to be pulled from the game, and provided she didn\u2019t suffer a concussion Hoover may return today against Nikiski at 5 p.m.<\/p>\n
The JDHS coach credited ball handling and solid defense as the difference in Thursday\u2019s contest, which led to a 30-21 lead at half. <\/p>\n
\u201cThey learned to be patient … and to take care of the ball,\u201d Knight said. \u201cIt was good learning for them. Initially, we jumped on them, got a few steals and finished the layups.\u201d <\/p>\n
Knight said maintaining the lead was a challenge for last year\u2019s team. It proved a challenge again Thursday, but JDHS kept its lead until the buzzer sounded.<\/p>\n
\u201cHistorically, we\u2019ve gotten up at times and haven\u2019t been able to maintain that lead,\u201d she said. <\/p>\n
Soldotna outscored JDHS 20-14 in the second half but the Crimson Bears continued attacking the basket, taking them to the free throw line 25 times and converting on 14. Two of Soldotna\u2019s starters fouled out, including the Stars\u2019 lead scorer Lindsey Wong who had 14 on the night, and a third Soldotna player was one foul away from exiting.<\/p>\n
Knight liked what she saw from her freshman players, which also included guard Alyxn Bohulano (five points) and forward Caitlin Pusich (four points). Also returning to the starting lineup after missing most of last season due to an ACL tear was sophomore forward Cassie Dzinich (four points), and senior forward Tona Fogg added seven points to the team effort. Junior wing Georgia Robinson scored two, as did Hoover. <\/p>\n
Every JDHS player found their way into the scorebook, but Knight said success this season will come down to defense. \u201cThat will be our bread-and-butter.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Juneau-Douglas girls basketball team lost its starting point guard on Thursday but won the game. Starting guard Kallen Hoover left just three minutes into Thursday\u2019s contest against Soldotna after suffering a broken nose, head coach Lesslie Knight said, following the Crimson Bears 44-41 victory over the Stars during the first round of the Kenai […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":6,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-14681","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14681","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14681"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14681\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14681"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14681"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14681"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=14681"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}