Girls basketball: Tigers can't overcome turnover troubles vs. New Prague

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For parts of four days last week the Farmington girls basketball team held a share of first place in the Missota Conference.

With a Shakopee loss at Red Wing and a 58-37 victory over Chaska Tuesday night, the Tigers drew even with the Sabers at 5-1 in the league. The deadlock was broken Friday night when the 14-2 Tigers — ranked ninth in Class 4A — suffered their second conference road loss of the season, 45-42 at ninth-ranked (Class 3A) New Prague.

The physical Trojans shot better than any team has against Farmington this season, connecting on 46 percent of their shots from the floor. Seven of their 17 field goals were on lay-ups resulting from Farmington’s 16 turnovers, according to head coach Jason Berg.

“Obviously, this is the best a team has shoot against us all year — not an indication of our half-court defense,” Berg stressed. “When we got our defense set we did a good job of contesting shots.”

The Tigers trailed 22-15 at the break and the Trojans scored the first five points of the second half to go up by 12 points. The visitors buckled down on the offensive end after that and closed the gap to six with five minutes remaining. A Taylor Meyer basket cut the Farmington deficit to one in the final minute, but New Prague responded with a basket of its own to ice the game.

The Tigers shot just 34 percent from the floor despite a decisive 37-22 rebounding advantage.

“Their aggressiveness and physical play really affected us, especially around the basket,” Berg said. “We were able to get some good looks, especially off of offensive rebounds, but we were not able to finish.”

Meyer led the Tigers with 11 points and eight rebounds. Jordan Bridges scored nine points and grabbed a team-high 12 rebounds and Elena Koch also just missed a double-double with nine points and eight rebounds.

Farmington 58,

Chaska 37

An 8-0 run to start the second half opened up a 36-14 advantage and the Tigers coasted to a 58-37 win over Chaska last Tuesday night at Tiger Gym.

Bridges led the Tigers with 15 points and hauled in nine rebounds. Meyer scored 14 points and Jamie Kenealy tacked on 13 points.

Koch grabbed 10 rebounds and Shelby Calhoun had a nice all-around game with seven points, three rebounds and five assists.

Tags: girls basketball, sports, farmington, tigers, prep