Lady Lions work to strengthen their game

The Albany Lady Lions enjoyed their best outing of the season last week in their final tuneup before district play. 

Albany (3-11) opened the District 10-2A schedule Tuesday, Dec. 10 with a 54-26 loss to Hawley. Details will be re-ported next week. 

The Lady Lions’ next district game is Friday, Dec. 20 at Stamford. 

Albany had drastically different results in two games last week, losing Tuesday, Dec. 3 to Roby 44-19 before defeating Ranger 58-38 on Friday, Dec. 6. While progress has been slow in showing up on the scoreboard over the past month, first-year head coach Ashlyn Bevel said headway is being made. 

“The overall effort has improved,” she said. “I’ve preached on that, and it’s finally clicked. You have to give full effort to win these games, and we’re not getting blown out anymore because of that.” 

The win produced Albany’s highest point total of the season and marked the first time the Lady Lions scored at least 10 points in every quarter. The previous high was 48 scored in a win against Rotan. A big part of the success was the having two players share the scoring load. Caroline Holson poured in 20 points with Ashlyn Miller adding 18 as eight of 10 players scored.

“That was a really good game for us,” Bevel said. “That was the best game I’ve seen all year for both Caroline and Ashlyn.”

Against Roby, Albany struggled offensively again, failing to reach 20 points for the sixth time. Leading by eight after one period, Roby took control with an 18-point edge in the second quarter.

The Bright spot for Bevel was a significant defensive performance in the second half.

“The score was 34-8 at halftime, and we only allowed them 10 more in the second half.” Bevel said. “At halftime, I told the girls we’d have to play cat-up offense, but also on defense, and we did; we just weren’t lucky on the offensive side.”