Marshalltown girls basketball had a winning defensive effort but couldn’t find the offense on Friday night in a 40-21 loss to Fort Dodge in the Roundhouse.
Frankie Long finished with 20 rebounds, 10 blocks and four points for the Bobcats.
The Bobcats got into a 13-6 hole after the first quarter and didn’t score in the entire second quarter, but limited the Dodgers to seven second-quarter points to only face a 14-point deficit at the halftime horn.
“I was really proud of the way that we dug deep,” MHS head coach Brian Murphy said. “We started slower than we wanted, but I was really proud of the way we dug in. I saw a lot of collective buy-in where we had all five girls locked into the gameplan, which with back-to-back games you don’t always see.”
The Bobcats were 9-of-45 (20 percent) from the floor and committed 22 turnovers. Jorja Janssen led MHS offensively with seven points and Millie Heitmann and Sydney Kapayou contributed three points each.
MHS was coming off the previous night’s 54-24 loss at Mason City.
“I saw a lot of very tired legs,” Murphy said. “Back-to-backs are a reality of the season, they’re going to come, but when you’re as short handed as we are, … if we’d gotten just a couple more of those bunnies to drop in early in the game where we can keep it tight and our defense ratchets it up, but we just had a lot of opportunities where we got ourselves to the rim and couldn’t finish.”
The Dodgers didn’t score often, but a 6-2 run across the end of the third and start of the fourth quarters pushed the lead to 31-14 and MHS wasn’t within 13 points the rest of the way.
It’s the 11th-consecutive victory for the Dodgers in the series with the Bobcats.
“That kind of mental toughness we showed is something you can build upon,” Murphy said. “You can create your own momentum and defense is a great way to do that. We’re starting to see the opportunities where the girls in the motion offense are creating their own looks and not waiting for someone else to create them. It’s those little things when you desperately need a bucket and somebody makes the right cut, it makes a huge world of difference.”
The rebound and block totals for Long are career-high single game efforts for the 6-foot-2 sophomore.
“She learned from her mistakes a bit tonight where she picked up two quick fouls and then I thought had the most defensively sound game that she’s had where she was either perfectly vertical or close to it throughout,” Murphy said. “With her length and strength, she’s going to intimidate a lot of shots whether she gets a hand on it or not and Fort Dodge did not want to shoot from the outside tonight unless they had to and Frankie and all the girls did a great job of contesting shots.”
The Bobcats (4-4) return to action in 2025 at Waterloo East on Jan. 7.
Fort Dodge 40, Marshalltown 21
FORT DODGE (3-3, 1-1) — Meah McCaleb 2 2-6 6, Brooklyn Pommer 0 0-0 0, Maddisen Hoshaw 0 3-4 3, LJ Maehl 7 4-6 17, Ellie Doster 0 0-2 0, Dakota Pommer 5 0-0 10, Addison Lentsch 1 0-0 2, Janelle Derrig 0 0-0 0. TOTALS 15 9-18 40.
MARSHALLTOWN (4-4, 0-2) — Millie Heitmann 1 1-2 3, Jorja Janssen 3 1-4 7, Ellie Hughes 1 0-0 2, Sydney Kapayou 1 1-2 3, Frankie Long 2 0-2 4, Nia Lott 0 0-0 0, Morgan Hilderbrand 1 0-0 2. TOTALS 9 3-10 21.
FORT DODGE 13 7 7 13 — 27
MHS 6 0 8 7 — 21
3-Point Goals–Fort Dodge 1 (Maehl). Team Fouls–Fort Dodge 12, MHS 15. Fouled Out–none.