GROSSE ILE — The first half of the Huron League girls basketball regular season schedule wrapped up on Thursday night. One of the matchups taking place around the league saw New Boston Huron traveling to Grosse Ile.
Both teams came into their scheduled meeting a bit up and down overall on the season, sporting a combined 10-12 record overall. Huron was looking for back-to-back wins after previously snapping a three-game losing streak, while Grosse Ile was hoping to avoid a third straight loss.After finding themselves trailing early in the fourth quarter, the host Red Devils put together a late push to hang on for an eventual 46-42 win over the visiting Chiefs.
The win for Grosse Ile comes after dropping three of their last four meetings overall with Huron, including a season sweep last year where they lost each matchup by 24 points. And for a relatively young Devils bunch still learning to consistently play winning basketball, a collective team effort was what head coach James Frost was most encouraged with.
“What I liked the most is that all 10 girls played and contributed tonight,” Frost said. “It was a total team win, one through ten with no drop off. Even when we went to our bench, they extended the lead.”
Thursday had the makings of a potential track meet early on as both sides combined for six made three-pointers in the first quarter alone. Grosse Ile, in particular, was on pace for 80 points after leading 20-13 through that first stanza.
Things did regress to the norm on the scoring front in the second. And despite seeing a lead as many as 10 points vanish completely for a brief moment, the Devils carried a slim four-point advantage over the Chiefs heading into halftime.
“Our game plan tonight was to shut down (Elle Huffman and Addison Beddow),” Frost said. “That was our focus defensively, to put pressure on the ball. It was a physical game both ways. We got burnt a few times but we got a lot of steals, so I think the pressure from us outweighed the few lay-ups that (Huron) did get.”
The early stages of the second half proved to be a potential turning point for Huron.
An extended 10-0 run that began midway through the third quarter and trickled into the fourth flipped what was a seven-point Grosse Ile lead into a slim one-possession lead for the Chiefs. In fact, that 40-37 matched their largest lead at any point in the game on Thursday.
“We just started to control the pace finally,” Huron head coach Brad Bossick said. “We came into this game wanting to do that. We knew (Grosse Ile) was going to put pressure on the ball. We were prepared for that, but you couldn’t tell by watching it.
“So when we started to finally control the basketball, we started to get some transition points and things started to flow for us.”
The fourth quarter was a tight and tense one overall as both teams combined for just 13 points, while both coaches called a combined four timeouts. Grosse Ile, however, was able to hold Huron to just one made basket in that final frame and closed the game out on 9-2 run.
Bossick’s frustrations with the loss were twofold, from simply making shots — or not enough, rather — to what he described as “no sense of urgency.”
“It was missing the easy buckets,” Bossick said. “There were a lot of missed lay-ups, and we missed a lot of points at the free throw line. But there was no sense of urgency tonight. We didn’t get back (on defense), and (Grosse Ile) out-hustled us. We kept changing up defenses and they still out-hustled us.”
Arguably the most impactful player on both ends of the floor Thursday was Grosse Ile point guard Madeline Trevino.
In addition to spearheading the Devils’ full-court pressure defense, Trevino led all scorers on the night with 19 points. The sophomore was responsible for two of the team’s six made triples and half of their 16 trips to the free throw line, converting on five of them.
The islanders elsewhere in the win got seven points each from two other underclassmen in freshman Kennedy Klein and sophomore Danica Tomich.
Huron meanwhile did see Elle Huffman and Brooklyn Burke each turn in a team-best 14 points. The pair of seniors also accounted for all seven of the Chiefs’ made threes on the night.
To Bossick’s point about missed chances, Huron as a team went just 5-for-12 at the free throw line, including 3-for-10 in the second half.
UP NEXT
Both teams will begin their second playthrough of the Huron League schedule beginning next week on Monday, Feb 2.
Grosse Ile (6-7, 3-4 Huron League) will stay home and welcome in a Riverview team that cruised to a 57-25 win in the first matchup back on Dec 15. Results aside, Frost is looking for continued “improvement” across the board.
Huron (5-6, 2-5 Huron League) meanwhile that same night will return home, eyeing a season series sweep of Monroe Jefferson after winning by 20 in the first meeting back in December. Bossick says there is a point of emphasis on jump-starting the offense.
“I just really want to see our offense working,” Bossick said. “We’ve been struggling on offense these last three or four games. It goes in spurts but most of it is in transition. So we have to get that going again.
“And we just have to work on the fundamentals,” Bossick continued. “We had that at the beginning of the season and it’s been gone ever since.”
Photo gallery of New Boston Huron vs Grosse Ile in a Huron League girls hoops battle
