No. 8 Beach beats Trinity to open Region 7 tourney

• Hailee Farstveet and Nikki Grinsteinner

Press Photo by Dustin Monke Beach sophomore Hailee Farstveet, left, drives to the basket against Dickinson Trinity senior Nikki Grinsteinner while Trinity senior Kelsey Deichert, middle, watches on Monday afternoon during the Region 7 girls basketball tournament at Knights of Columbus Activities Center.

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It was a long week between the District 13 championship game and the quarterfinals of the Region 7 girls basketball tournament.

“It seemed like it took forever,” Beach head coach Bob Waldal said. “It couldn’t get here fast enough.”

It took the No. 8-ranked Buccaneers a little while to find their groove, but they still sailed into the semifinals with a 59-44 victory over Dickinson Trinity on Monday afternoon at Knights of Columbus Activities Center.

Beach (20-2) got out to a big lead, crashed the boards and hit from the free-throw line to take another step toward the Class B state tournament.

The Buccaneers outrebounded the Titans 49-32 and scored 19 second-chance points off 13 offensive rebounds.

“The thing about it is they do such a great job attacking the offensive rebound,” Trinity head coach Alysia Barman said. “That was something we had stressed all week.”

Beach senior Kelcee Dykins had 20 points and 10 rebounds, sophomore Cydni Stedman had 14 points and 16 rebounds and sophomore Hailee Farstveet had 15 points, six rebounds, six steals and four assists.

The Buccaneers play Killdeer at 6 p.m. today in the semifinals.

“It feels good to get our first win out of the regionals, but we’ve still got to take it one game at a time and do what we knew we can and not get too far ahead of ourselves,” Dykins said.

The Buccaneers jumped out to an 11-1 lead, not letting Trinity score forget on the board for the first 4 minutes of the game and jumping out to a 16-3 lead after the first quarter.

Trinity shot 1 of 16 from the field in the opening quarter and finished 18 of 58 (31 percent).

“I thought if we could have got the ball to bounce our way a couple times, especially in that first quarter — we missed a lot of bunnies — we could have given ourselves more of an opportunity,” Barman said.

Beach didn’t shoot too well either, going 19 of 58 (33 percent) from the field, though it was 16 of 20 (80 percent) from the free-throw line.

But, crashing the boards made the difference.

“Oh, we can miss shots,” Waldal said. “We tell our kids, ‘we have to rebound, we have to rebound.’ They have to crash the boards and obviously that was the difference in the game.”

Trinity didn’t get its bearings until the second quarter when sophomore Jillian Stockert and senior Kelsey Deichert sparked their team with 12 combined points.

Still, Beach extended their lead to 32-17 at halftime and went on a 13-4 run over the final 5:23 of the third quarter to take a 47-27 lead.

The Buccaneers’ biggest lead came midway through the fourth quarter, 57-32, shortly after Dykins and Stedman hit back-to-back 3-pointers.

“Cyd hit one and I turned to (assistant coach) Loni (Hall) and said, ‘That’s it,’” Waldal said. “You could just feel that they felt comfortable finally.”

Stockert led Trinity, which ended the game on a 14-2 run, with 12 points.

Deichert had nine points and senior Nikki Grinsteinner capped her career with a team-high 14 rebounds and a game-high three blocks to go along with four points.

“I thought our girls came out and worked hard,” Barman said. “They worked hard defensively. Defensive effort was there and that’s the one thing we tell the girls all the time is that’s the only thing we expect from them is to go as hard as they can defensively, and I thought they did.”

Trinity 3 17 27 44

Beach 16 32 47 59

T: Jillian Stockert 12, Kelsey Deichert 9, Katelyn Grinsteinner 7, Rachel Jahner 5, Andrea Jirges 5, Nikki Grinsteinner 4, Kelbie Ficek 2.

B: Kelcee Dykins 20, Hailee Farstveet 15, Cydni Stedman 14, Bailey Waldal 7, Brooklyn Zimmerman 2, Morgan Nunberg 1.

3-pointers: T 7 (Stockert 2, K. Grinsteinner 2, Deichert 1, Jahner 1, Jirges 1), B 5 (Farstveet 3, Dykins 1, Stedman 1). Free throws: T 1-6, B 16-20. Total fouls: T 15, B 12. Rebounds: T 32 (N. Grinsteinner 14), B 49 (Stedman 16). Assists: T 11 (Stockert 3, Jahner 3), B 8 (Farstveet 4). Steals: T 7 (three with 2), B 11 (Farstveet 6). Blocks: T 3 (N. Grinsteinner 3), B 1 (Waldal). Turnovers: T 15, B 15.

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