Red Hawks fall to Westby, Viroqua as losing skid continues
A spirited early display against Westby showed clear signs of progress for the Gale-Ettrick-Trempealeau girls basketball team.
However, the closing stretch against the Norsemen and G-E-T’s follow-up performance against Viroqua reiterated that there is plenty of work still out there to be done.
The Red Hawks (0-19, 0-8 Coulee) push on with a pair of conference games over the next week, hosting Black River Falls on Thursday at 7 p.m. and playing at Arcadia Tuesday at 5:45 p.m.
Westby 60 G-E-T 44
Well into the second half, G-E-T appeared on course to possibly get off the schneid and finally register its first notch in the win column this season. Unfortunately for them, the Westby Norsemen had other plans.
Westby (6-10, 2-6) used a strong stretch run to come away with a 16-point win over the Red Hawks last Monday in Galesville. Before the disappointing ending, G-E-T had put together its strongest performance of the year.
A transition layup by Alexis Ouellette put the Red Hawks ahead 14-13 with 4:45 left in the opening half. A short time later, Lexi James got the rebound off her own miss and made the putback basket to give her team an 18-15 advantage with just under three minutes to play until halftime.
In the final minute of the first half, Joshlyn Lunsford buried a triple and Lorrisa Thompson hit a long two of her own to allow G-E-T to carry an encouraging 24-17 lead into the halftime intermission.
The Red Hawks led by as much as eight early in the second half and maintained a 37-30 advantage with a little over 11 minutes left in regulation, only to see things unravel from there. Westby ripped off a 22-3 run to leapfrog ahead by double digits and never looked back as the Norsemen denied G-E-T’s bid for that elusive first win.
Leading scorers for the Red Hawks in the defeat were James with 12 points, Lunsford with nine and Caydence Thompson with six. Ali Fortun and Raegan Stenslien finished with 13 and 12 points, respectively, to lead the way for the Norsemen.
Viroqua 67 G-E-T 36
Coming off a promising performance against Westby and going against a Viroqua team that only beat G-E-T by 11 the first time around, the Red Hawks had reason to be optimistic going into their rematch with the Blackhawks.
Instead, the Blackhawks (5-9, 3-6) built up a 19-point lead by halftime and cruised to a dominant 67-36 win last Thursday in Viroqua.
Leading scorers for Viroqua in the win were Allyah Schwem with 25 points, Emily Hubatch with 19 and Emma Moilein with 11. Stats for G-E-T were not available at the time of publication.
