It’s Morning at Community Clash

Hutchinson outlasted a stubborn Kennedy team 49-43 to open the 2nd annual Community Clash on Saturday, February 18, at Hopkins Lindbergh. Park Center ran away from Owatonna 81-64 in the second game. That’s our Game of the Week, so we’re going to report on that one in a separate post. Moorhead came back from a 9-point half-time deficit to surprise Forest Lake 70-66 in game #3. And, the home team, Hopkins, routed Woodbury, playing without Rachel Hakes 73-27. Hutch 49 Kennedy 43 Hutch dominated Kennedy early, well, except on the scoreboard. The Tigers had 7 offensive rebounds in the 1st 4 minutes but missed a bunch of open looks, including 6 from beyond the arc. Even so, they led 11-6 at the 13 minutes mark as Tori Wortz assisted on a Morgan Kurth 2, then finally hit her team’s 1st 3-pointer. After that, it was tooth and nail but Hutch maintained the lead at 32-28, 40-38, then 45-40 on a Kenzie Rensch 3 at the 5 minute mark. Hutch coach Tim Ellefson said, “We had a lot of open looks that we didn’t get to go down. Part of that is playing at 9 a.m. But they also showed us some things we don’t usually see. They showed us a zone that we didn’t handle particularly well. But, we turned them over a little bit, that was good.” Kennedy coach Quinitin Johnson was “very encouraged by what I saw. We’ve got to clean up the offensive rebounding, we can’t give that kind of team that many possessions, but I’m very encouraged by how we played today.” In fact, after a flurry of early O-boards, Hutch didn’t have another one inside of 10 minutes of the 2nd half. But Kennedy didn’t get many either. They missed 8 straight shots down the stretch and rebounded only one of them. In fact, Kennedy didn’t score from 5:32 until 0:21 as Hutch pulled away. A Zaraya March 3 made the final score 49-43. Alyssa Bryan-Jeffries led all scorers for Kennedy with 18, while March added 11. Kurth had 16, Wortz 13 and Rensch 11 for Hutch.