Eleva-Strum girls hoopsters wallop Whitehall, back in first place tie
CENTRAL - Anytime a new coaching regime takes over a team or program, there's always a getting-to-know you phase.
Some phases take longer than other.
New Eleva-Strum High School Head Coach Dave Hazuga acknowledges such a phase for him and his staff took a while since the start of the 2024-25 season back in November.
But now it seems, knowledge has been obtained.
And that knowledge has helped the Cardinals win eight of their last nine ballgames and have them in a first place tie again in the Large Dairyland Conference after beating first-place Whitehall 65-46 on Thursday, Jan. 16. With Independence/Gilmanton's 76-35 win over Lincoln on Thursday night, Jan. 16, there's once again a three-way tie in the LDC with Whitehall, E-S and Indy/Gilmanton all 8-3 and Melrose-Mindoro a game back at 7-4 after they took care of Osseo-Fairchild, also on Thursday, Jan. 14 by a 63-41 score. The Indees are 11-3 overall and the Mustangs are 8-4 in what's turned out to be a very competitive DC season in girls basketball.
A good example of knowledge obtained and used to the Cardinals' advantage is the play of senior Neeley Lasher. She's worked her way into the playing rotation and has been a positive force in all phases of the game. Not only did she have 11 points against the Norse, 8-5 overall, but her defense and rebounding have strengthened the Cardinals, 10-4 overall, in those areas. E-S length, height and reach bothered the Norse, no small teams themselves, greatly and helped lead the Redbirds to lead by as many as 23 points in the second half after leading 37-22 at halftime.
"We've finally have learned as staff what our players can do, their skills, their abilities and talents and have put them in the best position to help the team and in a rotation that works for the team throughout the game," Hazuga said. "We've become more consistent on defense and have avoided or at limiting the breakdowns that have hurt us in some of our ballgames and hope to keep improving on that."
Lasher said the team has worked hard on both rebounding and defense in practice but there was a good deal of motivation for them beyond just good play going into Thursday's contest. Especially after the Norse topped them in overtime back in early December on a last-second shot.
"We really wanted to win this game, we wanted to beat them," Lasher said. "They're a very good team and we wanted to show that we could beat them and stay in contention for the conference title and get a good seed for the tournament."
Central made eight three-pointers to Whitehall's three with junior Aliza Kulig making four of them. Hitting thse outside shots opened up the middle for Eleva-Strum to attack, especially Kulig herself as she finished with a game-high 18 points. Avery Glenz was also in double figures for E-S with 12 points and both Avery Spanberg and Avaya Zweifelhofer scored six points.
"Aliza doesn't need my permission to shoot from the outside," Hazuga said. "We want to take a lot of three-point shots. Not only did she make those shots but it was wonderful to watch her confidence grow to where she was willing to drive to the basket and get points or fouls that way. On offense, Avery is very consistent with her scoring (she leads the LDC in scoring with nearly 18 points per game) so she draws a lot of attention from opposing defenses. That's always led to someone stepping up their scoring to add to what she's doing. Usually it's a different player each ballgame as it was Aliza tonight. Our goal is to have consistent second and third scoring option to really make us tough to defend/"
Whitehall's Paige Lisowski is third in the league in scoring at 15 ppg. and she had 12 points against the Redbirds as did teammate Ayranna Auserdau. But E-S's defense held the Norse other top scorers like Trinity Aasen and Kyla Lambeck well below their scoring averages.
Playing their third game in four days and fourth game in a week's time, the Cardinal get some much needed time off until their next contest Tuesday, Jan. 21 in another important league contest at Small Dairyland leader Cochrane-Fountain City (8-5) beginning at 7:15 p.m.
