Saxony Lutheran girls basketball team rolls past Sikeston in season debut

SIKESTON, Mo. -- The Saxony Lutheran girls basketball team took advantage of a hot start to pull away early in its season opener and defeated host Sikeston 59-33 on Monday night.

"All in all we competed pretty hard," Sikeston head coach Matt Schonhoff said. "We didn't really see this in the jamboree, but tonight Saxony did a good job of finding gaps in our zone that we're really going to have to work on. They exploited those and we got in certain situations that presented us some problems."

Saxony Lutheran's blistering 20-5 start left the Bulldogs facing a double-digit deficit most of the night. Sophomore Brianna Mueller accounted for a large part of the Crusaders' early success. She scored 11 points in the first quarter, connecting on three shots from behind the arc.

Sikeston trailed by as many as 20 points late in the half before closing within 11 with a minute left before the break.

"What's hurt us is we can't hardly go five-on-five in practice, and I think that showed up tonight a little bit," Saxony coach Sam Sides said. "That's the first time we've had to go against five other girls up and down the floor in a game situation.

"We have a lot of work to do, but we shot the ball well, especially in the first part of the game and got us a lead. After that we kind of hung on."

Saxony pushed back in the final minutes of the half to take a 32-15 lead into the locker room.

"We had a bad last 40 seconds there in the [second] quarter where we could have pushed it underneath 10 and really had some momentum," Schonhoff said. "They kind of stole that momentum back and we came out flat in the third quarter and had a hard time."

Saxony held Sikeston scores over the first five minutes of the third quarter to extend its lead to 38-15.

Mueller, who scored 17 points in the first half, finished with a game-high 26 points. She netted all four Crusader 3-pointers on the contest.

Raegan Wieser added 10 points for the Crusaders.

Mikala Nichols had a team-high 10 points for Sikeston.

Saxony 20 12 12 15 -- 59

Sikeston 5 10 8 10 -- 33

SAXONY LUTHERAN (59) -- Grace Mirly 6, Brianna Mueller 26, Tess Daniel 6, Ashlynn Collier 2, Raegan Wieser 10, Maddie Brune 9. FG 19, FT 17-26, F 14. (3-pointers: Mueller 4. Fouled out: none.)

SIKESTON (33) -- Kiera Steward 3, Tyra Bonner 4, Larysa McClellan 2, Mikala Nichols 10, Erica Peet 5, Ariana Beard 2, Miranda Harrison 2, Tyeshia Mitchell 5. FG 12, FT 8-15, F 2. (3-pointers: Steward 1. Fouled out: none.)