Lady Trojans defeat Three Forks

There were mixed results last week for the Whitehall High School girls basketball team.

The Lady Trojans (12-2, 6-2 5B) opened the week with an impressive 47-33 win road win over defending state champion Three Forks and fell at home 46-38 to Big Timber.

With the game tied 10-10 Thursday night in Three Forks, Whitehall would go on an 18-2 run sparked by strong defensively play and all-out effort that had several Lady Trojans diving on the floor for the ball.

"That's who we want to be. We talk about establishing an identity and we want to be nasty on defense. We can score, but we want to be able to stop them," Head Coach Kelly Nieskens said.

It was a balanced scoring attack for Whitehall with Asha Noyes leading the team with 13, Maxine Hoagland adding nine, Kendra Klapan and Jada Clarkson each finishing with seven, Meagan Johnson adding six and Brynna Wolfe finishing with five.

Nieskens praised the play of Klapan and Hoagland.

"I was so happy for those two. We've seen it in practice and we've been waiting for it to get here in a game. For them to do it in the same game is great. Kendra played really well and Maxine, that's what we've been hoping for," he said.

Three Forks was led in scoring by senior Kyle Olson with 24 points and Nieskens was pleased with the way his team defended her and the other Lady Wolves. He said you try to slow her down and stop everybody else.

"That was the game plan and it feels good as a coach to have the girls come out and execute the game plan," he said.

The Lady Trojans got off to a slow start Saturday against Big Timber and trailed 16-5 at the end of the first and 26-19 at half.

Clarkson led the team in scoring with 19, Asha Noyes added nine, Wolfe had eight, and Klapan finished with two points.

This week the team will host Gardiner Friday before a road matchup Saturday at Manhattan. They will wrap up their regular season conference play February 5 at home against undefeated Townsend.

"We will approach this week like the others. We have some small things to fix before we can be a really good team so we will focus on that and our conference games coming up," Nieskens said.