Notre Dame shakes Sikeston

Notre Dame could not have expected what occurred in the first half against SEMO Conference foe Sikeston Thursday night.

In the battle of the Bulldogs, the hosts stood toe to toe with their Class 5, fifth-ranked visitors in the first half, but they eventually succumbed to Notre Dame 57-29 at the Sikeston Field House.

“They did a really good job of getting open and finding the soft spots in our defense, “Notre Dame coach Kirk Boeller said. “They were able to pick up some easy baskets early on and I really like how coach (Vaughn) Shephard has them going in the right direction. They were definitely a handful to deal with tonight.”

Although Notre Dame got some easy points in the paint in the first half, Sikeston held its own fronting the post and made it hard for the taller players like Tori Rubel, Kate Rubel and Neveah Lucious to catch and score. Sikeston only trailed Notre Dame 10-9 after one quarter of play and trailed by just four points going into halftime.

“I told the girls at halftime we just have to play harder,” Boeller said. “We didn't start the game how we expected and I think we had the mentality of let’s just wait for someone to make that big play and feed off of that and that didn't happen. I thought everybody needed to step up in the second half and give a little bit more effort and that was the message so I thought they did a good job of executing that.”

Notre Dame used multiple steals that led to easy layups and found scoring inside a bit easier in the second half, outscoring Sikeston 15-7 in the third quarter and 21-5 in the final period.

Senior Tori Rubel lead all scorers with 14 points for Notre Dame while Lucious poured in 12, Brie Rubel drilled home nine points and Kate Rubel scored nine points as well to give the visiting Bulldogs their 10th victory of the campaign.

Sikeston was led offensively by sophomore Landri Hammontree’s 12 points followed by six from Kirsten Fairhurst and Jakiah Adams who notched five points in defeat.

After a home contest with North County on Monday, Notre Dame will travel to Springfield, MO to take part in the always-tough Nixa Invitational Tournament.

“Our focus going into the Nixa Tournament is putting together four good, consistent quarters of play,” Boeller said. “It’s been a few games since we have done that and that area out there has some really good teams so if we can accomplish that it will be good to see where we fall against that kind of competition.”