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New Prague takes care of Red Wing 78-59

By Brian Stensaas, Star Tribune, 01/21/11, 1:26PM CST

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A three-pointer at the first-half buzzer provided a lasting spark


New Prague's Sara Rookaird drives to the basket vs. Red Wing. /Marlin Levison, Star Tribune

As twin sisters, Sara and Taylor Rookaird have grown used to sharing just about everything.

Friday night on their home court, the New Prague senior girls’ basketball players added one more to the list: momentum.

Neck and neck with Red Wing for the entire quick-paced first half, New Prague held the ball for the final possession before halftime clinging to a two-point lead.

“Exactly what we expected,” Trojans coach Ron Gunderson said.

With the seconds ticking away, Sara Rookaird took the ball at the top of the key, took a chance at the buzzer and swished it for a 33-28 cushion.

“When she does something like that, it hypes me up completely,” Taylor Rookaird said. “It excites all of us. We went into the locker room with so much energy.”

It didn’t stop.

Taylor Rookaird took over from there, scoring six straight Trojans points to open the second half. She wound up with a half-dozen more – and 15 for the game – helping New Prague pull away for a 78-59 home court victory.

While Gunderson agreed that Sara Rookaird’s three-pointer “deflated” Red Wing (12-3, 3-2 Missota Conference), he pointed to a cleaner slate of basketball in the second half as the game-changing moment.

In the first half, New Prague committed a host of turnovers and left Red Wing players alone under the basket on four occasions for easy buckets. That wasn’t the case as the game went on.

“We realized it had to be 36 minutes,” Gunderson said. “Whatever happened at the end [of the first half] is not something we could rest our laurels on. We had to keep playing.”

Junior forward Anna Rynda was the story early for New Prague (11-4, 4-1). She scored 17 of her game-high 24 points in the first half while keeping Wingers leading scorer Tesha Buck scoreless until six minutes into the second.

Buck finished with nine points.

PLAYER OF THE GAME


Anna Rynda, New Prague

New Prague junior forward Anna Rynda scored 17 of her game-high 24 points in the first half Friday night against Missota Conference rival Red Wing.

Q What do you take away from this game?
A  It’s always a big rivalry between us. It seems like there’s always something on the line: conference, section. We’ve always been a big rival with them and we knew Tesha Buck would be huge so I was just told to stay on her all game. When both teams came out fast, I knew it was going to be this kind of game.

Q How happy is the locker room when a teammate (Sara Rookaird) nails a three-pointer at the end of the first half?
A Oh my gosh. That whole first half we were thrilled anyway, and that just added to it. It was good. It was a big confidence booster. We knew we couldn’t come out weak after that, because that’s what had happened in other games and it wasn’t going to happen again.

Q You were pretty on that first half as well.
A Yeah, I was happy going to the locker room for sure. It was a good half for me. I knew I had to come out strong again in the second. Not let up. We wanted to beat them down the court. We did that, and that brought us right back up.

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