Junior hoopsters romp over Eagles

A 17-0 second-quarter run sent the Muskie junior girls’ basketball team well on the way to its third-straight NorWOSSA victory here yesterday afternoon, dispatching the Dryden Eagles 40-19.
“We were pretty happy about that one on the bench,” co-head coach Mike Krueger enthused afterwards.

“It was a total team effort out there that saw everybody contributing, which was great to see.
“I would still like to see them work the offence a little bit more as it got hectic out there for a while, but it was a good victory,” he added.
Hannah McLeod led the charge in the second quarter with eight points, and finished with a game-high 17 points.
It was a different story for the Muskie senior girls, however, who fell behind the Eagles 17-4 in the first quarter and couldn’t recover.
They ended up losing 48-29 to drop to 0-5 on the season.
“Dryden out-hustled us,” coach Dan Bird stressed.
“They just dominated and they were moving their feet in the first quarter, and that was the difference.
“We just weren’t executing what we have been practising, and that has been the story of our season to this point,” he lamented.
Sarah Bagacki and Adriane Gurski each had five points to lead the black-and-gold.
In the small gym, both Muskie boys’ volleyball squads pushed the always-strong Eagles to the limit, but each ended up losing in five sets to fall to 2-3.
After splitting the first four sets (24-26, 25-15, 14-25, and 25-23), the seniors endured a dramatic back-and-forth final set with the Eagles before the visitors came away with an 18-16 win.
“Overall, I’m mostly happy with how the [match] went,” coach Allison Hyatt said afterwards.
“I wasn’t happy with the third set, and in the first set we started a little slow,” she noted. “But we were really good in the second and fourth sets that we won.
“And the fifth set was just a battle to the end, with both teams matching each other point for point.”
As for the junior boys, their five-set loss (20-25, 25-17, 25-17, 9-25, 12-15) was similar to another five-set thriller between the two squads back on Oct. 1, which also saw Dryden come out on top.
“If you look at the set scores for both of those [matches], they are almost identical with one team being streaky for a set and then the opposite happening in the very next set,” noted Muskie coach John Gibson.
“It’s fun to watch, though, and it shows that the league is very balanced right now,” he added.
All four teams will resume NorWOSSA action on Tuesday afternoon, when they head to Kenora to take on the Broncos.
Prior to that, though, both Muskie basketball teams will be in Thunder Bay for a pair of weekend tournaments.