M-ettes set for 2B Tourney

After posting a dominant 17-1 season and posting a 7-1 conference record, the Malta M-ettes won the 2B and will automatically advance to the Northern B.

Where they will seed, depends on how the team performs in front of their home crowd two more times this weekend as Malta High School hosts the 2017 District 2B Girls' Basketball Tournament on February 16-18.

The team will face the winner of the play-in game between the Glasgow Lady Scotties and Harlem Lady Cats, who finished fourth and fifth respectively in the 2B rankings.

"We will have a practice before that game and then we will watch that game and see who it's going to be," M-ettes Head Coach Hammond said. "And then we will go from there."

The Malta M-ettes ended the regular season with wins over Havre last Tuesday, February 7, Glasgow on Friday, February 10 and Shelby on Saturday, February 11.

In the team's win over Havre, the team knew they were coming into a game with a team that wanted to avenge their loss in Havre a couple weeks ago. The team knew they needed to focus in the locker room before the game.

"We talked about playing good defense and playing well together and having fun," Taylor Gilkerson said.

Malta defeated Havre 42-25, outscoring Havre 28-12 in the second half after a pretty even first half.

Malta was led by Sophia Stiles, who scored 31 points. Though she had a rough first half filled with turnovers, Stiles, knew she had to adjust.

"I just told myself to stop throwing dumb passes," Stiles said.

Taylor Gilkerson hit a three pointer on an inbound pass from Stiles putting Malta up 14-11 in the second quarter. Malta would hold onto that lead for the duration of the game.

"It felt good," Gilkerson said claiming the basket was more of Stiles' pass than her accuracy. "I was wide open."

Stiles claimed that Gilkerson would've hit that shot ten of ten attempts.

"She'd make ten," Stiles said.

The M-ettes defeated Shelby 44-27 last Friday. Jada Nicholson had a 20 point, 14 rebound double-double, Stiles had twelve points and Shay Garfield added 10 points.

"We started off sluggish but we had a two point lead at half-time," Coach Hammond said. "It looked like our third game of the week. We were just having a little trouble early on."

Nicholson had 25 in the team's 51-23 win over Glasgow.