HOLMEN — The feeling in the air was that the West Salem High School girls basketball team had a run in it Thursday night.
The question that accompanied that was whether or not Holmen would be able to withstand it.
The Vikings had built a 14-point lead early in the second half and led by 11 on a a couple of occasions later in the half of their nonconference battle at the Bernie L. Ferry Fieldhouse, but the Panthers started picking away at it on a free throw by sophomore Anna Witte and a 3-pointer by junior Jayda Miller.
Eventually the 11-point deficit was down to two, but Holmen found a way to score 10 of the final 14 points to hang on for a significant 57-49 victory.
The win was significant because it pushed Holmen’s record to 3-1, and it was significant because the Vikings hadn’t beaten the Panthers since the second game of the 2019-20 season. Holmen had lost four straight in the series before sophomores Makenzie Nunemacher and Reese Tierney scored nine of its final 10 points over the last 6 minutes, 32 seconds.
“We talk about the team we want to be when there is adversity,” first-year Holmen coach Lionel Jones. said. “It’s easy to be a really good team and stay together and communicate when things are going well.
“But when that adversity hit, I was really proud of the way they responded.”
The Panthers (0-2), who started their season with a loss to Central last week, made their move after senior Charley Casey hit a jump shot off a pass from senior teammate Macy Kline for a 47-38 lead with 9:14 left.
West Salem scored the next seven points — three from senior Josie Brudos and two each from junior Bella Quackenbush and freshman Peyton Jehn — and was within 47-45 after a Brudos free throw with 7:09 on the clock. But the Panthers scored just four points the rest of the way, and the Vikings found a way to come up with just about every loose basketball down the stretch to keep West Salem from good scoring opportunities.
Sophomore Aspyn Archer made three first-half 3-pointers and scored 16 points to lead Holmen to its second straight victory. Kline added 12, Nunemacher 11 and Casey 10 before she had to be helped off the court late in the game after a hard fall on her back while trying to pull down a rebound late in the game.
“I think it shows we’re really here to play,” Kline said of the victory. “I think some people are ready to look past us and move on, but we have a good team that works hard and isn’t going to back down to anything.”
Sophomore Anna Witte made two 3-pointers and scored a team-high 15 points for West Salem, which also received a 3-pointer and 14 points from Brudos and a 10-point performance from sophomore Ava Hendrickson.
Hendrickson scored all of her points during a stretch of about 3 minutes, 30 seconds early in the second half to keep the Panthers in the game. Hendrickson’s final basket of that stretch cut Holmen’s lead to 40-31 with more than 13 minutes left.
Archer hit two 3-pointers in the first seven minutes and her third gave the Vikings an 18-13 lead with 7:27 left in the first half. That, coupled with Tierney and Nunemacher scoring points late, gave the sophomore class a nice contribution to the victory.
“I think the fact that a lot of them were on our team as freshmen says a lot about them,” Kline said of the sophomore class. “They are really going to develop a lot and be great players and be a big part of this team.”
Jones said players have adapted well to the thoughts and plans of a new coach as they prepare to begin the MVC season with a home game against Aquinas and its 114-game conference winning streak on Tuesday.
“We’re playing a different style of basketball than what’s been played here in recent years, so there’s always that honeymoon period of going from one to the other,” Jones said. “As coaches, you have to stay patient.
“We had too many turnovers tonight for my taste, and once we get things like that under control, I think we’ll be a really good basketball team.”
