Spuds fall to Sabres in season opener

The Moorhead Spuds girls basketball team started off the 23-24 campaign with a tough loss on the road to a scrappy Sartell-St. Stephen team 57-40. The Spuds had their chances to earn a road win but struggled with ball control throughout the contest. Fourth year head coach Tom Dryburgh said “it’s tough to win on the road regardless, but it is really tough when you turn it over on almost half of your possessions”. The Spuds coughed it up 31 times compared to 19 turnovers for the Sabres. The Spuds held a small advantage 17-16 before the Sabres closed the half on a 8-0 run to lead 24-17 over the Spuds at the break. “We had our chances, but Sartell is a good team and they just kept coming at us and we struggled to regain our composure after the finish to the first half”. The Sabres, 1-0 pushed the second half lead to 20 before the Spuds made a late rally to cut it to twelve, 40-52. That was as close as the Spuds were able to get, and the Sabres added a few layups in the closing minutes to win by 17. The Spuds were led by juniors Julia MacAdamas (11 points & 13 rebounds), Tori Hagen (12 points on 4-7 shooting from 3). The Spuds do have a week to improve and Coach Dryburgh thinks his team has a want to fix their mistakes, “we are going to focus on what we can do to get better, we have some things we can adjust before we play Tuesday and just focus on getting better instead of thinking about who we are playing,” Coach TD added. The Spuds will be back in action Tuesday night as they play host to Fargo Davies, who is ranked preseason #3 in the newly created two A Division in North Dakota. Game time is set for 7:30PM.