Lady Hodags run over Eagles in 70-22 home victory

The Rhinelander High School girls’ basketball team had no problem with a short-handed Northland Pines squad Friday night at home. 

Vivian Lamers scored 20 points to lead three Hodags in double figures as Rhinelander dispatched the Eagles 70-22 at the Jim Miazga Community Gymnasium.

Eliana Smith paced Northland Pines (2-3, 0-2 Great Northern) with eight points, but the Eagles couldn’t get much going with sisters Rynn and Ryley Darr out of the lineup. The Hodags opened the game on a 17-0 run and led 47-16 at halftime.

“The kids had good energy,” Hodag coach Ryan Clark said. “I thought they didn’t worry about the opponent as much as just let’s have a good game, let’s play clean and have some tenacity. I thought they did that really well. We were just much stronger basketball team. They had a couple of kids out, which hurt some as well, but I thought we did a pretty good job.”

    Rhinelander’s Ella Miljevich (12) and Kelsey Winter (40) guard a layup attempt by Northland Pines’s Tatum Meier during the first half of a GNC girls’ basketball game at the Jim Miazga Community Gymnasium Friday, Dec. 13. (Bob Mainhardt for the River News)
  

Rhinelander (5-1, 3-0 Great Northern) made shots from the outside as well, hitting seven 3s in the opening half alone. The Hodags hit triples on three straight possessions to make it 12-0 less than four minutes into the contest. After Rhinelander’s opening blitz, the Eagles got the lead back down to 10 points on two separate occasions, but the Hodags closed the half on a 23-2 run and never looked back.

Most of the starters had a short night, with the bench filtering into the game over the final 12 minutes — the last nine of which were played under a running clock with the Hodags up by more than 40 points. 

“Lots of people got opportunity to score. We got a lot of people in, good energy from the bench, good energy when the starters are out, cheering for the girls that cheer for them,” coach Clark said. “So as a coach, I’m happy with the performance, no injuries, a good way to end Friday night.”

The 20 points for Lamers were a season and career-high. The sophomore had 13 points after the break, including three triples as the Hodags hit 10 3s overall for the game. 

“What I liked to see tonight is that Vivian’s starting to score a little bit,” coach Clark said. “She had 20, but she had three or four 3s, which is good for her. She can definitely shoot it, and I think she’s getting more confidence. I think she could consistently be another scorer for us, double-digit scorer, so that makes us better.”

Aubryn Clark finished with 18 for the Hodags and Kelsey Winter chipped in 10 points. Rhinelander had nine different players score in the contest. 

Coming into the contest off its longest stretch of practice since the opening week of the season, coach Clark said the game was a continuation of what his team worked on during a full week of preparation. 

“We’ve worked a lot on zone offense last week here, and I thought we did a pretty good job of hitting flashing in the middle, throwing opposite, finding shooters, cutting off of penetration. So that was nice to see that kind of come to fruition today,” he said. “Defensively, they kind of dribbled into the trapping areas, and I thought we rotated pretty good. We didn’t follow, we turned and ran. We worked on that a lot.”

The Hodags remained in a first-place tie in the GNC with Lakeland, which cruised past Antigo Friday night. Rhinelander will be back in action on the road this coming Friday night against a surprising Tomahawk team, which sits 2-0 in the GNC after wins over Antigo and Northland Pines. The Hatchets suffered their first loss of the season in overtime, 57-50, to Three Lakes in non-conference play on Friday.

“I think again, we are our size, our speed athleticism, our style play will probably give them fits. We’ll do very similar — press them hard, but we’ve got to be clean,” coach Clark said. “I like where we’re at as a basketball team. I think our underclassmen have really stepped up the varsity game isn’t too big for him anymore, so we just got to keep getting better.”

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].