Lady Mavs drop two games in Lewistown

The Lady Mavericks (1-3) dropped a pair of games last weekend as the team traveled to the Lewistown Invitational last weekend. The Lady Mavs opened up with a 44-38 loss to the Shields Valley Rebels and then suffered a tough 63-24 loss to the Roy-Winifred Outlaws on Saturday. Their lone win of the season came on Saturday, December 3 against Terry.

Even though the weekend was a rough one, Lady Mavericks Head Coach Amber Erickson is optimistic that the team can turn things around.

“We have a lot of season left to improve on these things,” Coach Erickson said. “I feel like the ability is there. It’s just going to take some time. We have weapons but we need to figure out how to get all of those weapons working together and clean up our mistakes.”

Coach Erickson admits that they opened up against four tough and very aggressive teams, which included Plentywood as their season opening opponent, followed by Terry, who the Mavs beat 46-44 for their lone win of the season.

“These teams were really great teams to play, that showed us where we need to step our game up,” Coach Erickson said.

In the team’s loss to Shields Valley, the Mavs were led by Jada Sudbrack who had 15 points and 10 rebounds. Mickayla Johnson had eight points and Bailey Funk had six points and six rebounds.

North Country had over 20 turnovers in the loss and were 9-of-25 from the charity stripe.

“We’ve got to start taking care of the ball,” Coach Erickson said. “We are making too many mistakes to stay in games. We’ve also got to step up to the line and knock down our free throws. That was the difference in winning and losing.”

The team suffered one of their worst losses in the team’s young history as they fell 63-24 to Roy-Winifred the next night.

The Mavs were led by Casity Boucher who scored eight points. Kayleigh Cummings had six points and Johnson added four points and six rebounds.

“Not taking anything from Winifred-Roy, they are a tough team, they have a deep bench, they are physical, stronger than we are, more aggressive than we were and they really dictated everything that we did in that game with their aggressive defense,” Coach Erickson said. “We weren’t able to get many looks at the basket or second shot opportunities.”

Roy-Winifred displayed traits and strategies similar to Coach Erickson’s previous teams. The pressure defense that netted the Saco-Whitewater Panthers 3C gold in prior seasons came back to haunt the young North Country team.

“We do not handle pressure (defense),” Coach Erickson said. “We have got to learn to attack the basket more confident in both directions.”

Coach Erickson also noted that the team has to work on attacking passes rather than waiting for the ball.

“We’ve also got to have people step up and take on a scoring role,” Coach Erickson said. “I think we are realizing how many things Tatum (Moore) created for us at the point guard position. Not only scoring but also drawing attention by penetrating and creating shots for other people too.”

The team is set to take on Brockton in Brockton on Friday evening at 6:00 p.m. They will then have their home-opener against Glasgow in Saco on Saturday afternoon at 3:00 p.m.