Osage keys on Hillman, takes TIC East lead

By Kristi Nixon

OSAGE — Osage girls basketball coach Chad Erickson and his team worked its plan to near-perfection.

Key on St. Ansgar post Madison Hillman with a double- and sometimes triple-team and let the rest of the team fire away.

It worked well as the Green Devils came away with a 43-28 victory to take sole control of the Top of Iowa East Conference on Tuesday, Jan. 18.

“We, the first time, did an okay job on Hillman,” Erickson said. “But, we knew we had to do better this time. We were going to have two girls on her wherever she was and I think our girls did that tonight. She still scored some points, but we made it tough on her.”

Hillman ended up with 10 points, but they were all tough shots for the 6-foot-2 junior and despite the attention she had a double-double with 11 rebounds.

“If you play them straight up, she’ll kill you,” Erickson said. “So, we knew if they made some threes, that we might be in a little bit of trouble, but we were playing the odds and hoping they wouldn’t make enough to beat us and they didn’t.”

St. Ansgar coach Scott Cakerice said he knew what the game plan was going to be.

“That didn’t surprise us,” Cakerice said. “It didn’t work so well the first quarter and a half. Then Madison gets a couple of fouls on her and she can’t be so aggressive. It is what it is: they deserved to win the game and did a nice job.”

Adri Kruse added nine, but was only 50 percent from the free throw line (3-of-6) and the rest of the Saints scored nine. They shot just 20.8 percent from the field.

And St. Ansgar was 0-for-14 from beyond the three-point line.

“It reminds me of our first game against Central Springs,” Cakerice said. “We couldn’t throw the ball in the ocean. And tonight, our girls could not make a shot if our lives depended on it and that hurts. If we made a couple shots from out there, then maybe they have to come out a little bit. If you are going to shoot the ball, you have to think it’s going in.”

The full story appears in the Jan. 26 print edition of the Enterprise Journal