By Bruce Karnick

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The Raider Ladies continue to do what good teams do and that’s win more than they lose. Sure, that is an oversimplification, but is it really? A good team is expected to beat mediocre and bad teams. A good team is also expected to lose to great teams most of the time, but a good team is also expected to upset a great team once in a while. Hastings is a good team that is bordering on becoming a great team.

The state rankings support that assessment with the Raiders sitting at the number 84 spot in the state out of 398 teams. Preseason and early-season rankings are tough to justify in high school sports. So many things factor into the season, but with only one game remaining for the Raiders, looking at the state and section rankings reinforces the success Hastings has had under first-year head coach Sheri McLeod. At 15-8 overall and 1-3 in the section, Hastings is currently the fourth seed in the section. Park of Cottage Grove is in third and significantly ahead of Hastings in the Quality Ranking Formula – or QRF- that is used by the Minnesota State High School League.

Fourth is not a bad spot to be if they can hold on to it, something they should be able to do with one game remaining in the regular season. Fourth place gives them a home section game, hosting the fifth seed, which is currently Bloomington Jefferson. Of course, the rankings can change once the coaches gather to vote on the final seeding positions within the next week.

Now that we know what lies ahead, how did the last two games shake out for Hastings?

On Feb. 16, South St. Paul came to town looking for revenge from the first time the two teams met almost a month prior. Hastings won that game 53-50 at South St. Paul. The Packers grabbed the lead early this time, 5-0, and held on to that for the first four minutes of the game. It took Hastings over five minutes to score when Emma Bakker went coast-tocoast to put in the first two Raider Points.

That score opened the gates for Hastings to chip away at the Packer lead. The game progressed slowly on both ends of the court. With 8:25 left, South St. Paul had a 15-8 lead, thanks in large part to their full court press. To get through 10 minutes of game time took over 20 minutes. At first, it seemed like a solid strategy by the Packers, but the slower pace also meant more options to foul and that led to the Packers being into the double bonus. The Packers giving up so many fouls combined with going cold for nearly seven minutes of no scoring allowed Hastings to close the gap even further. By the time the half ended, Hastings had been hitting their transition scoring and the Raider defensive strategy kept the game close and ultimately gave Hastings the 27-25 intermission lead.

McLeod and the girls have learned to communicate much better as the season has progressed and she shoots them straight. “Basically, at halftime I said, ‘Do you want positive or negative first?’ They said negative so I told them we’re not moving the ball. We’re standing still. Yeah, we’re shooting the ball, but it’s not going in. We need to play better defense; we’re not getting after the 50-50 balls. I’m said this is your half. As bad as a half we played we’re still up to so it’s not us out there playing, it’s you. So, you got to suck it up, get some pride and just come out here and play our game this half, not how they want us to play but how we play. So, they took it upon themselves to do what they needed to do. When we moved the ball around in the first half, we got really good looks. We got good layup looks we got a good jump shot looks they just didn’t fall in with that. I think sometimes they get in their own head. Like it didn’t fall, it didn’t fall.”

“We got off to a slow start too, we also had almost a week off after we played last Wednesday. That was our last game of the week. And I gave them a couple of days off just to kind of recover recoup. It’s a long season. So, I will chalk the first half up to we haven’t really practiced for a week,” added McLeod Hastings continued mixing up the defenses which had South St. Paul becoming more and more frustrated. The Raiders kept the pressure on and started connecting on their clean shots. The final of this one was not as close as the previous. Hastings came out on top again, this time 68-56. Lilly Nuytten led the way with 20 points, Hailey Strain had 17 and Emma Baker 16.

According to McLeod, the girls stepped up big and helped themselves, “They calmed down, they played patient and they really did start to rely on each other. We also changed our press break on helping more people up front so not sending everybody all the way back because they were leaving the ball. So, helping them and being able to break that press so them being patient, them working through our offense, then working through the press break actually helped us just like chip away and gain more momentum that way.”

The Raiders then traveled to Mahtomedi to take on the Zephyrs. This game did not go as planned at all. Mahtomedi had a 58-27 lead at the half and never relented finishing with 90 points to Hastings 54. Nuytten had 20 on the night and Rachel Notch joined her as the only other double-digit scorer with 10.

Hastings final regular season game is Feb. 25 at Simley for a 7 p.m. tip.

Hailey Strain has a tenacious and aggressive attitude in the paint for Hastings and has the skills to shot from almost anywhere on the floor.Photo by Bruce Karnick