Raider girls fall to powerful Bangor as Golden hits milestone

As the Arcadia High School girls basketball team was preparing for last Tuesday’s game against Bangor, they knew they were up against a tall task.

Bangor, 6-1 on the year, has cruised through the start of the 2022-23 season and looks to be one of the area powers again this winter. The visiting Cardinals rolled out to an early 18-3 lead at Arcadia High School, and turnovers sealed the fate for the hosts in a 76-32 loss.

The Raiders (3-5 this season) are scheduled to visit Fall Creek this Tuesday before Coulee Conference play heats up into January.

Arcadia cut Bangor’s lead to 20-9 with about seven minutes remaining in the first half, but the visitors got four straight easy baskets after consecutive turnovers by Arcadia. Some of that was Bangor’s solid defense, but it’s hard to win with that many turnovers, Arcadia coach Evan Pagel said.

“We just couldn’t get comfortable. We knew that going in one of the big messages was if we don’t take care of the ball it was going to be a long day, and from the get-go we just had way too many turnovers,” Pagel said.

Bangor took a 35-11 lead into halftime and never relinquished the advantage in the second half. Joeryn Freit and Nora Tucker co-led Bangor in scoring, each adding 19 points.

The loss ended a three-game winning streak for Arcadia, but their coach said it could serve as a nice reminder that the program still has room to grow if they want to accomplish some of the goals they set at the start of this season.

“Hey, if we want to be where we want to be at the end of the year, we have to compete in games like this at the end of the year and ultimately win these games like this,” he said.

Arcadia senior Breah Golden hit a major career milestone in the loss, becoming the sixth player in program history and 11th in school history to reach 1,000 career points. Golden scored 17 points on Tuesday and now sits at 1,001 — the school’s all-time leading scorer is Linzy Sendelbach with 1,196.

Golden could take over the top mark by the end of the year if she continues her current pace, Pagel thinks. The Division 2 Lake Superior State commit would need to average just over 12 points per game over the final 16 games on the schedule to reach the feat.

“She’s been our offense. She’s got the green light, and we work around her. Seeing her hard work pay off and seeing the reactions of the other girls—and even the ones not in high school yet—that was a great community moment,” he said.

Arcadia (field goals/attempts-free throws/attempts-rebounds-fouls-points)—Bremer 0/0-0/0-1-4-0; Slaby 0/2-0/2-4-0; Schank 1/2-0/4-2-3-2; Pehler 3/12-5/7-4-11; Golden 4/13-7/8-6-4-17; Lockington 0/1-0/0-2-0; Aspen 0/3-0/0-1-1-0; Kolstad 1/3-0/0-3-2; Sonsalla 0/4-0/0-5-2-0.