Argos starts new era with loss to Bremen

Kelly leads with 9, Urednick adds 5 in prep debut

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

BREMEN — The Argos girls basketball team won two games last year. Bremen won 24 games and made it to semistate.

So from Argos’ standpoint, perhaps Tuesday’s season-opening game between the teams was not so much about who won or lost – Bremen won 60-23 in a game that featured a running clock for the last 14 minutes – as it was about what they have moving forward.

Skylee Feathers led Bremen with 17 points, and Teagan Feathers added 12. Skylee Feathers is 6-0, and Teagan Feathers is 6-2, and both are agile bigs who can finish at the rim at one end and protect the rim at the other.

Kinzlee Kelly hit three 3-pointers and scored nine points, and Alexa Urednick came off the bench to score five, all in the second quarter.

Argos started three seniors – Kelly, Haley Shafer and Makenzie Smith – but also played five freshmen. Emma Langfeldt started, and Urednick, Kinzey Prochno, Harper Ripley and Brooklyn Thomas came off the bench.

In addition to Urednick, Prochno had two baskets and a nifty assist to sophomore Peytyn Willis in transition in the fourth quarter, and Ripley drained a 3-pointer.

All five Argos freshmen played on the girls soccer team that won a sectional title a little more than three weeks ago.

“The most encouraging thing tonight is that they kept playing hard,” Argos coach Nick Medich said. “They know they’re learning. They took getting knocked down a few times the best they could positively, I guess, the best they could.”

The team, however, has no point guards with experience. That led to giveaways, which triggered the Bremen transition game.

“The disappointing thing still is the amount of turnovers, unforced, that we make,” Medich said. “We need to fix that quickly. … They were playing aggressively on top, which is what you want your guards to do. I think too we kind of helped them a lot by telegraphing passes and doing the same thing over and over again. We need our girls to be more creative, but I think being creative tends to, If you beat those guards and you dribble in there, there’s some girls down there like twin towers. Those girls are monsters. They’re so tall.”

By comparison, Argos lost 61-7 to Bremen in last year’s season opener.

Medich said that playing Bremen, who has won three sectionals and two regionals in the last three years, in the opener is “one of the hardest things we have to do as a basketball team.”

This time, they were within 10-6 after two early Kelly 3-pointers.

But Bremen responded with a 27-0 run to end any doubt.

“All the girls are trying to get some confidence,” Medich said. “We’re teaching them something that they don’t know. I think they’re expecting results right away, and it’s not going to happen necessarily because of the skill.”

Then Urednick hit a driving layup on a press breaker from the left wing before scoring on a steal and layup. She also split a pair of three throws. All this came in less than three minutes.

There are some issues on defense at which Medich also wants to improve.

“I don’t think we move our feet on defense very well, whether it’s man,” Medich said. “We look like we’re working hard, but it’s pretty slow motion, and when the feet don’t move, there’s nothing you can do. We need to work on on-the-ball pressure with our feet now. I think they’re athletic enough. They are pretty aggressive picking off passes. I was impressed with that. They didn’t seem to have a problem jumping in the passing lane.”

Bremen coach Alex Robinson said that getting out in transition is a point of emphasis for his team. He also noticed how Argos played “under control.”

“They didn’t have a lot of height obviously, and we had a couple six-footers in there, so that’s a disadvantage for them,” Robinson said. “But I thought they played under control. I thought they moved the ball on offense. Hit some big shots against us too. They made us pay when we left them open, and they’re always scrappy. They’re scrappy and physical, so I thought they made up for some of their lack of size. I think that’s a team that’s just going to keep getting better.”

Bremen 60, Argos 23

ARGOS (23) (0-1)

Emma Langfeldt 0 0-0 0, Peytyn Willis 1 0-0 2, Haley Shafer 0 0-0 0, Makenzie Smith 0 0-0 0, Kinzlee Kelly 3 0-0 9, Kinzey Prochno 2 0-0 4, Harper Ripley 1 0-0 3, Alexa Urednick 2 1-4 5, Lilyan Ream 0 0-0 0, Brooklyn Thomas 0 0-0 0

TEAM: 9 1-4 23

BREMEN (60) (1-0)

Kate Kincaid 1 1-1 3, Allison Klingerman 1 0-0 3, Peyton Johnson 4 0-0 8, Skylee Feathers 6 5-6 17, Teagan Feathers 6 0-0 12, Blakeleigh Soliz 2 0-0 6, Lola Bender 2 4-5 9, Alyssia Lopez 0 0-0 0, Makenna Binkley 0 0-0 0, Brooke Bellman 0 0-0 0, Abby Wildauer 1 0-0 2

TEAM: 23 10-12 60

Three-point field goals:

Argos 4 (Kelly 3, Ripley),

Bremen 4 (Soliz 2, Bender, Klingerman)

Total fouls: Argos 10, Bremen 5

Score by quarters

Argos 6 8 3 6 – 23

Bremen 25 19 8 8 – 60