Sophie Keister achieved a double-double with 16 points and 13 rebounds but Blue Earth Area still came up short when they traveled to Janesville to take on the Janesville-Waldorf-Pemberton Bulldogs in basketball on Saturday, Feb. 19. The Bulldogs built up an 11-point lead by intermission on their way to a 54-34 victory over the Bucs.

JWP sandwiched two 3-pointers around two free throws to take an early 8-0 lead, but BEA scored 11 of the game’s next 13 points to go on top 11-10.

Lola Lundquist got the Maroon and Gold on the board with the team’s only 3-pointer of the game. Two free throws by Keister and a steal and basket by Maddie Schiltz had the Bucs trailing by two points, 9-7. After the Bulldogs converted one of two free throws to go on top 10-7, Chloe Groe grabbed an offensive rebound and passed it to Keister who scored to pull BEA to within one point of JWP.

Lundquist then maneuvered through the Bulldog defense to get free for a jumper inside the lane. The ball swished the nets to give the Bucs an 11-10 lead.

However, JWP responded with 11 consecutive points to take a 10-point lead at 21-11. Two free throws by Lundquist finally broke the Bulldogs’ run but JWP ended the half with a 27-16 lead.

Keister opened the second half by grabbing an offensive rebound off of her own missed shot and putting it though the hoop. After JWP made a free throw, Keister converted another offensive rebound into two points to make the score 28-20 in favor of the Bulldogs.

The host team would add another basket and a free throw to go on top 31-20 but Schiltz found Keister alone under the basket for an easy two points and then Keister hit a baseline jumper to cut JWP’s lead to 31-24.

The Bulldogs began to pull away after that and finished with a 20-point victory.

A couple of areas which stood out when looking at the team statistics were the free throws and 3-point shooting. JWP went to the charity stripe 36 times compared to only 16 for BEA. The Bulldogs made 19 of their free-throw attempts compared to seven for the Bucs.

Neither team shot well from outside the arc. JWP was 5 of 17 on 3-point attempts for 15 points while BEA converted on only one of their 22 attempts for three points.

The Bucs had 40 rebounds to 37 for the Bulldogs. BEA ended up with 13 steals compared to 18 for their opponents. JWP turned the ball over 19 times while forcing 22 BEA miscues.

In addition to Keister’s 16 points, Lundquist tallied nine, Schiltz had five and Kate Armon had four.

Schiltz also had five rebounds and five steals while Lundquist recorded four steals.

The loss dropped BEA’s record to 4-19 while the Bulldogs improved to 7-19.

The Bucs were scheduled to play at Medford on Tuesday, Feb. 22, but due to bad weather the game was rescheduled to Thursday, Feb. 24, in Blue Earth. Results of that contest will be in next week’s edition of the Faribault County Register.