The Bridgeport girls basketball team cleared the first hurdle in their quest to win a State Championship as they knocked off Minden 65-57 on Thursday morning in round one of the C-1 bracket at the Bob Devaney Sports Center in Lincoln.
The 4 seed Bulldogs got big games from both senior Olivia Loomis-Goltl and sophomore Ella Schluterbusch, with both finishing with 22 points.
Loomis-Goltl is of course the superstar, and she scored 15 of her points in the second half including eight in the third quarter and the first five points of the fourth quarter.
With today’s big game Loomis-Goltl moved past older sister Ruthie and former Alliance star and Husker star, Jordan Hooper as the all-time leading scorer in girls high school history in the panhandle with 2,097 points. She’s just 13 points away from equaling Scottsbluff legend Dru Kuxhausen as the regions all-time leading scorer, girls or boys. (Hat tip to Jeremy Woznick for the numbers)
Schluterbusch was nails on both ends of the court, really setting the tone in their zone defense while scoring from the perimeter along with drives to the basket plus at the foul line.
Bridgeport trailed 10-8 at the end of the first quarter but really took over from that point moving forward to down the five seed. Bridgeport put up back to back 16 point quarters in the second and third before closing with a 25 point fourth quarter.
The Bridgeport zone was stifiling for much of the game forcing the Whippets into (unofficially) 22 turnovers. And the Bulldogs also took a strength of Minden and turned it into a weakness as they shredded their press to create easy baskets on the other end.
The rest of the team also came up with solid games with freshman Olivia Brown scoring eight points while senior Grace Dean and junior Tacey From each finished with six points in the win.
Up next is a mammoth game against No. 1 seed Lincoln Christian tomorrow morning at 8 am MT at Pinnacle Bank Arena. You can listen to that game on Friday morning at 7:45 am MT with the pregame show on KMOR 93.3 FM and KMORfm.com.
Lincoln Christian defeated North Bend 51-39 showing off a real nice blend of inside and outside play offensively.
Also in C-1 today it was No. 2 seed Sidney downing Adams Central 40-38 and the Lady Raiders will player the winner of the game between GICC vs. Broken Bow.
