THS girls suffer first loss

Lady Blazers get Newcastle, Alliance this weekend

Andrew Towne
Posted 1/4/23

TORRINGTON – The Torrington High School girls’ basketball team suffered its first loss of the season Thursday evening to Nebraska Class C-1 top-ranked Bridgeport Lady Bulldogs.

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THS girls suffer first loss

Lady Blazers get Newcastle, Alliance this weekend

Posted

TORRINGTON – The Torrington High School girls’ basketball team suffered its first loss of the season Thursday evening to Nebraska Class C-1 top-ranked Bridgeport Lady Bulldogs.

Over the first four minutes of the game, the Lady Blazers kept pace with Bridgeport in a battle of the unbeaten teams.

Trailing only four points midway through the opening quarter, the Lady Bulldogs scored the next 11 points en route to a 72-38 win, handing the Torrington its first loss of the season.

“We knew they were obviously a good team coming into it. You don’t have two D1 college recruits and not be a good team,” first-year coach Chris Strampe said. “Our goal was to do the best we could on the big girl, which, I thought we did, but some of the other ones stepped up and hurt us.”

In the first minute of the second quarter, sophomore Olive Osmera slowed the Bridgeport run with her first points of the evening. Two minutes later, she added a 3-pointer.

Senior Marissa Moorehouse tossed in her fifth and sixth points of the game with 4:07 left before halftime to cut the visitor lead to 26-13.

It proved to be as close as Torrington came to Bridgeport the remainder of the evening.

The Lady Bulldogs kept the full-court press on the entire contest and with the presense of 6-foot, 3-inch University of Colorado Buffalo signee Ruthie Loomis-Goltl made things difficult for the home team all night long.

“When you have a 6-3 girl that is a good shot blocker, even if she’s not there, it affects your shot mentally, and a lot of those girls haven’t played against a post that well,” Strampe said.

Bridgeport pushed the lead to 38-18 by half and to 57-27 heading into the fourth quarter.

The Bridgeport lead topped out at 34 in the final moments of the game.

“Ultimately, it was a game we used as a barometer of where we are at on the season and tell us where we are at,” Strampe said.

Moorehouse led the team with 16 points, while sophomore Teryn Stokes added seven. Osmera tossed in five, while junior Marina Pastalle had four. Sophomores Madix McIntosh and Jaycee Hurley and freshman Kennedy Reinhardt had two apiece.

After the game, Strampe said the game will be used as a learning experience for the young Lady Blazer team.

“When we play an expectational team like that, we need to have more mental toughness so we can stick with them so, hopefully, we can do what we want to do and pull away at the end,” he said. “We had some moments in the first half where we kind of lost it, and it resulted in big swings in the game.”

The Lady Blazers are back in action at Newcastle on Friday at 5:30 p.m.

“It’ll be another great game to see where we are at,” Strampe said. “We are pretty familiar with Newcastle, so we know what we have to do and who we have to stop. We like our chances if we play as many girls as we play, and with them being a shorter rotation team, if we run the court like we want, we’ll give ourselves a chance.”

The next day, Torrington returns home to face Alliance, Nebraska in a rescheduled game from Dec. 13. Saturday’s game is set for 4 p.m.