The North Tama girls on the state’s biggest stage
Turnovers and cold fourth-quarter shooting ended the best season in North Tama girls’ basketball history Monday with a 47-35 loss to North Mahaska. The Redhawks finished 21-5, and this was the only loss to another 1A team.
The game was closer than the final score. The Redhawks had two leads, 2-0 and 20-19, and came within one a couple of times.
Redhawks right in it until late drought (Cedar Rapids Gazette) (w/photo gallery, video)
North Mahaska eliminates North Tama (Waterloo Courier)
North Mahaska rounds out 1-A semifinal field (Des Moines Register)
North Tama girls fall short to #1 North Mahaska (KWWL)
Quoth WHO’s Chris Hassel on Twitter: “North Tama forced to foul because North Mahaska is up 6 and attempting to run out final FOUR minutes of clock. Absolutely brutal.” The problem was, NT didn’t start doing that until there was a minute and a half left.
Although I strongly dislike fouling purely to stop the clock/force free throws, when there’s no shot clock, you have to do something.
So far, the 2010s have brought unprecedented success for North Tama athletics. Congratulations to the girls for adding another banner to the wall.
PS to the scoreboard operators: PLEASE LEAVE THE FINAL SCORE UP AFTER THE GAME. Don’t delete it 10 seconds after the clock strikes zero. Some people (cough) would like to take pictures of the final score before or during the postgame presentation. There’s 20 minutes until the next one, plenty of time to zero everything out.