JDHS girls fall to Monroe 40-33 on Saturday

Fairbanks’ Monroe Catholic Rams girls basketball team was rested and composed inside the George Houston Gymnasium Saturday night, earning a 40-33 win over the Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé Crimson Bears, just one night after falling 52-40 to their hosts.

“I give it up to Monroe,” JDHS coach Tanya Nizich said. “Monroe has a good squad. They played us hard and made it very difficult for us to get an offense going.”

JDHS sophomore Layla Tokuoka led the Crimson Bears girls with 11 points and senior Cailynn Baxter led with nine rebounds.

“I think I need to just step up and calm the team so they are not overwhelmed,” Tokuoka said. “Just don’t look at all the bad things. We did have some good things throughout the game and we just need to have a positive mindset for our future games.”

Added Baxter, “I think we just need to be a little tougher. They are a top 3A team. They are physical. I think we just need to execute our plays. We really struggle with finishing a play. We need to slow it down a little. And we need to get low. Our height takes our physicalness away so we’ve got to really get low.”

Monroe sophomore Leila Church led the Rams with a game-high 14 points.

“We just knew we couldn’t play scared,” Church said. “We had to play with confidence and that is what we did. This win will definitely help our RPI and it is just really big for us.”

JDHS senior Kerra Baxter had the Crimson Bears on the scoreboard first with a steal and layup 40 seconds into play. Monroe junior Trinity Turiel answered with a steal and fed senior Shannel Kovalsky for a layup to tie the score.

Tokuoka hit a sideline jumper to regain the lead, but Monroe senior Desiree Redfox connected from past the arc for a 5-4 advantage, the Rams’ only lead of the first half.

C. Baxter would earn a hard rebound and feed junior guard Gwen Nizich for a shot past the arc, and K. Baxter hit a free throw for an 8-5 lead.

C. Baxter would pull down three more rebounds, but JDHS could not find the net and Monroe tied the game with a free throw by Church and another shot inside by Kovalsky.

JDHS senior Addison Wilson hit a shot past the arc with 18 seconds left in the stanza for an 11-8 advantage.

Tokuoka hit a pair of free throws to open the second quarter and both teams appeared to want to control the pace, with multiple rebounds, steals and turnovers through the stanza, but they could not capitalize on the scoreboard.

JDHS’ Tokuoka would draw an offensive foul on Monroe’s Church for possession and C. Baxter scored for a 15-8 lead with three minutes left in the half.

Monroe’s defense stepped up to stop JDHS from an inbounds pass and Rams senior Desiree Redfox scored to cut the lead to 15-10.

JDHS senior Mary Johnson hit a jump shot for a 17-10 advantage, and had a steal and fed Tokuoka, who drove through traffic for a 19-10 lead.

Monroe’s Church would answer but Tokuoka found space for another driving score to give JDHS the 22-12 halftime lead.

“Our team came with energy today,” Monroe coach Travis Cortez said. “One of the things we looked at yesterday was we were real amped up and with the travel we didn’t really settle into our game. We were just playing with too much energy, not enough focus on the games. So we talked about slowing it down today, getting into our game. Yesterday we shot the ball horrifically in the first half. We said we are going to shoot the ball better, we’re going to make better decisions and we did that. They still got up on us at the half but we just had the talk, ‘We are a good team, they are a good team, but we know how to play basketball, come out and play our game.’ I said, ‘Look, it comes down to this. We always said the game is to 50 points. First team to get there is going to be the team that is out on top. Go back and take that lead real quick and then let’s see how they play from behind.’ And so we did that. We accomplished that early and then we slowly built on that.”

Monroe would open the second half with a steal by sophomore Leyton Cortez, who fed Kovalsky for a basket, and a JDHS miss was rebounded by Church, who brought the ball upcourt and fed Turiel for a basket.

JDHS junior Cambry Lockhart scored with 5:37 left in the quarter for a 24-16 advantage.

Monroe would get a series of rebounds, but not score until Turiel had a putback to cut the JDHS lead to 24-19 and force a Crimson Bears timeout.

JDHS would lose possession to Monroe pressure and Church would find a shot past the arc to trail 24-22 and after a JDHS turnover Church connected from distance again to give the Rams a 25-24 lead which they would never relinquish.

“I felt like our defense really picked up in the second half and it forced them into really bad passes and decisions that really resulted in positives for us and we were able to score the ball after that,” Monroe coach Cortez said. “It was an overall team effort. The girls saw that once we got that lead, and got energized. That’s what we look for. Any team does well when you make big plays like that. Our older girls, our leaders on the court, they stepped up and they played really good basketball.”

JDHS had a turnover on a pass and Monroe’s Turiel scored for 27-24.

Tokuoka would hit a free throw but Monroe would answer with two free throws by Kovalsky for a 29-25 as the stanza ended.

“It is just little details,” JDHS coach Nizich said. “They weren’t really doing any different defensively from the first half to the second half. I think we just need to recognize we had a great first half and we need to recognize what worked with those things that we were doing, what we got out of that and then analyze the second half and why we couldn’t do the same thing we were doing the first half. I think we could have taken a lot more shots. It felt like towards the end there we needed to attack the basket a lot more and doing a better job of that.”

JDHS guard G. Nizich would pick up her third steal of the game seconds into the fourth quarter, but the Crimson Bears had an empty possession.

Monroe slowed the pace of the game and pulled their offense outside and Church connected on her third shot past the arc for a 32-25 lead with under six minutes remaining.

JDHS had a turnover on their possession and started to press at half court, earning the ball back. A missed Crimson Bears shot was pulled down by C. Baxter for her ninth rebound.

A missed shot by JDHS’ Wilson was rebounded by Tokuoka and she earned a foul shot to trail 32-26.

A missed shot by Monroe settled into the hands of K. Baxter, who fed Lockhart for a score past the arc to cut the lead to 32-29 with four minutes remaining.

“As a team, and personally, I think we need to work on calming it down,” K. Baxter said. “It gets really loud and we need to calm the ball down and run a play all the way through because we struggle with that a little bit. They are a good team so we have to expect everything.”

Monroe took the air all the way out of the ball, slowing the pace and spreading their offense and finding a basket by Kovalsky to lead 34-29.

A turnover pass by JDHS gave possession back to Monroe and the Crimson Bears would be forced to start fouling the Rams to earn the ball back. On the fourth foul in a row Monroe’s Church would hit a free throw with 1:09 left.

JDHS’ Nizich answered with a drive and hit one free throw to trail 35-30 with 55 seconds left.

Monroe’s Church hit another free throw for 36-30 with under a minute to play. Another missed free throw by Monroe could not be gathered by JDHS, and the Rams went to the free throw line again with Redfox hitting two for a 38-30 lead. Church would add two more free throws with nine seconds left to play for the Rams’ last basket and a 40-30 lead.

JDHS Lockhart would hit from distance at the buzzer for 33.

Monroe coach Cortez commented on his team’s patience.

“We always talk about this motto that as the game goes on you’ve got to learn how to play faster but you’ve got to slow the game down at the same time,” he said. “That’s a hard thing for young players to understand and that’s something we work on all the time. We tell our players, ‘You know how to play basketball. Play basketball. Quit playing like you don’t know how because the game is getting to you. We play this game all the time. Go play the game.’ So we felt like our young players did that.”

JDHS’ Tokuoka added five rebounds to her team-high 11 points, Lockhart scored eight points, G. Nizich four, Wilson and K. Baxter three apiece, Johnson and C. Baxter two apiece.

The Crimson Bears hit 6-10 at the charity stripe, the Rams 9-17.

Monroe’s Church also had four steals and five rebounds to go with her 14 points, Kovalsky scored 10, Turiel nine and Redfox seven.

The JDHS Crimson Bears girls are 15-6 overall and 4-0 Southeast Conference. Monroe is 17-4 overall and 5-0 in the 3A Aurora Conference.

Next weekend the Crimson Bears will host the North Pole Patriots for senior night and homecoming activities.

• Contact Klas Stolpe at klas.stolpe@juneauempire.com.