Girls' basketball romps on opening night border battle (VIDEOS*)

*More video has been added to this blog post on Wednesday afternoon, and an area scoreboard was posted on Thursday morning.

AND SO IT BEGINS!

The highly-anticipated 2022-2023 girls' basketball season in Jaguar Country is off and running. The season opener tonight featured a bona fide border battle against Melrose Area on our home floor. The Dutchmen were 6-21 a year ago and 2-10 in the West Central Conference. Additional video clips from the game have been posted below on Wednesday. 

**Here's the team's five seniors who so graciously obliged my interview request just before they donned their jerseys and hit the court for the season opener. It is such a distinct honor to cover this team...


And as I was ill-prepared for that whole interview, I later learned that in league play the Jaguars in fact lost to Hancock last summer, but a week later at state they defeated the defending state champion Owls.

**Here's the starter introductions:


*Here's a video clip from the first half of tonight's game:


**Here's a great play when Allie Dingmann makes a three-pointer on a Tiyana Schwinghammer assist after the latter got bottled up on the right block:


Allie Dingmann's three-pointer came with 15:36 on the clock in the first half and gave the Jaguars an early 11-5 lead.

The B-B-E Jaguars girls' basketball team had an impressive showing for the season opener tonight against visiting Melrose Area. After a somewhat sluggish start, the Jaguars jumped out to a 30-16 halftime lead and played a much stronger second half with a final score of 68-35. An early 13-2 run pushed them out to a 13-5 lead in the game's first five minutes. To start the second half, the Jaguars outscored the Dutchmen 11-1 in the first 3 1/2 minutes to set the tone for the second half.

B-B-E's defense limited the Dutchmen to just 8 points in the first 11 minutes of the second half.

Abby Berge led the Jaguars with 22 points, while Harley Roering finished with 13 points after scoring seven in the first half. Tiyana Schwinghammer rebounded from a three-point first half to finish with 11 points as the third Jaguar in double figures. The senior trio also led the team with 6, 5 and 4 steals, respectively. From the floor, the Jaguars shot a solid 43 percent while making just three of 16 three-point attempts in the game. From the line, the Jaguars made 13 of 18 free shots, and a total of 10 Jaguars found the scoring column.

Next: defending conference co-champion Kimball Area looms large on the horizon as the Jaguars travel for their next game, which is one week from tonight. It's a huge game that the Jaguars are excited about! The road trip continues with a game at the other co-champion last year, Holdingford, on Friday, December 9.

I'll get more video added later on Wednesday afternoon. I managed to pull off a 16 page newspaper this week. It included 31 musical photos. No kidding.  

Area girls' basketball scores on November 29:
K-M-S 55, A-C-GC 41
New London-Spicer 70, West Central Area 43
Osakis 48, Paynesville Area 44
Dawson-Boyd 67, Benson 39
BOLD 71, Yellow Medicine East 47
Lac qui Parle Valley 68, Minnewaska Area 47
MACCRAY 60, Ortonville 15
Hutchinson 55, Litchfield 48