The Merrill girls played against two state-ranked teams last week, and while they came up short of an upset in either, they hardly got blown off the court.
The Jays dropped a 57-36 contest to 7th-ranked Eau Claire North (12-0, 20-2) on the road on Tuesday, then hung within 43-32 of 13th-rated Valley champ Marshfield (12-0, 19-3) at home on Thursday.
"We competed hard against two really good teams," MHS coach Melissa Yuska said. "I was really pleased because earlier in the year when we saw a decent team, from the beginning we would struggle to stay in the game."
Was this a positive playoff precursor?
"We hope so," Yuska said. "I don't think it's something that brought down our confidence because we were playing good teams and competing well. Hopefully we can carry that over to the post-season."
Marshfield held a 14-8 margin after the first quarter, and bumped the lead to 27-14 by the half. But Merrill held 9-8 edges in both of the final two quarters to reach the final tally.
"We were able to outscore them in the second half, which was a great to see," Yuska said. "The girls worked hard together as a team defensively and offensively in order to do that.
"We were in the whole game up until the end when we couldn't make some stops."
Renee Sladek scored 8 of her team-high 12 points in the second half, and she added 7 rebounds, 3 steals and 3 blocks. Andi English (6 p, 4 a), Jourdyn Mootz (5 p, 3 r), Aly Brandvold (3 r), Ruth Leland (3 p) and Ellen Donner (3 st) contributed.
The Tigers collected 20 points from Valley unani-mous First-Teamer Eleni Seitz.
Merrill-FG: 13-44 (30%); FT: 5-8 (63%). Marsh-FG: 15; FT: 9-15 (60%).
Solid start
The Bluejays hung within 12-7 of the Huskies in the first quarter and 25-16 at the half. But a 22-point outburst up-staged Merrill 15 in the third, and North capped it off with a 10-5 fourth.
"Down by nine at the half, we felt good with the way we were competing," Yuska said. "Unfortunately, they came out in the third quarter a lot stronger than we did. That was the name of the game. We fell behind and couldn't catch up. I would say that North was one of the best teams we've faced all year.
"I was very pleased with the effort the girls put forth."
The Jays counted on production from Sladek (11 p, 6 r), Mootz (9 p, 5 r), Donner (6 p, 3 r, 3 a), English (7 p), Emma Sowieja (3 r) and Brandvold (3 r).
"They tried to press us full-court, but our guards did a nice job of breaking their pressure and getting us into our offense," Yuska said.
North was paced by 17 from Kayla Hagedorn.
Merrill-FG: 12-42 (29%); FT: 12-18 (67%). ECN-FG: 23; FT: 7-17 (41%).
The third-seeded Bluejays (6-6, 8-14) hosted Wausau East (0-12, 4-18) in the WIAA Regional opener on Tuesday in a game too late for this edition. If they won, they will travel to second-seed Medford (8-4 GNC, 14-7) on Friday, March 11.
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