Trotters nearly topple Vikes

PLAINS – Maybe the Lady Vikings are not invincible after all.

The Plains Trotters put a scare into the undefeated, No. 4 ranked Charlo girls Thursday in Plains, taking a 26-25 lead into the fourth quarter and then hanging in there with the powerful Vikings for most of the last eight minutes before finally falling back to the 39-30 loss.

“We were only four down with about a minute and a-half left,” Plains coach Eddie Fultz said. “We did a lot of good things in the first three quarters but some mistakes in the fourth really hurt us.”

Still, the result had to be encouraging to Fultz and his Trotters as the Vikings had fairly well run them off the court in Charlo earlier this season.

“Charlo had trouble scoring on our half court defense, so we were doing something right,” Fultz offered. “These are the kind of games we need to go through together to get better in the long run.”

Trailing 20-13 at the half, the Trotters came out of the locker room on fire.

Kylee Altmiller started the rally with an entry pass to Krystena Boes and Boes converted the two-pointer to make the score 20-15. Then freshman point guard Kimmy Curry penetrated Charlo’s defense on a nice drive and converted the shot to make it 20-17, adding one of two free throws shortly after that to reduce the deficit to 20-18.

Kaylah Standeford then grabbed a defensive rebound and dribbled coast-to-coast for a driving layup to tie the game at 20-20 with 2:47 left in the third quarter.

At the buzzer ending the quarter, Curry scored with her left hand after a pirouette move freed her in the key for the shot, giving the Trotters a one-point lead heading into the fourth period.

The Trotters traded the lead with the Vikings once after that before Charlo scored the go-ahead, stay-ahead points and moved on to the win.

“We proved that we can play with them,” Fultz said, “and look forward to seeing them again if that’s the way it works out.”

Curry finished with a game-high 13 points to pace the trotters, Altmiller and Standeford added six apiece, Boes and Celsey VonHeeder two apiece and Mia Loberg one.

Destiny Manuel and Kassidi Cox scored 10 points each for Charlo and Liev Smith seven.

In other action last week, the Trotters trounced the Troy Trojans 51-20 in Troy Saturday.

Altmiller scored 25 points to lead Plains and Curry added nine.