Click the thumbnails to see photos and to hear post-game comments from Makenna Hendrickson and Coach James Faseett.

IOWA FALLS---Bay College women's basketball coach James Fassett said before Saturday night's game against Ellsworth Community College that he wanted to see a quick start from his players in the second game of this weekend tournament in Iowa Falls, Iowa.

He didn't get it. The Norse fell behind, 24-12, after the first quarter, and spent the rest of the night playing catch-up. Bay fell behind, 47-28, at halftime, and trailed by as many as 22 points.
 

The Norse cut that to within eleven in the second half, but ended up losing to the homestanding Panthers, 79-64.

The loss was Bay's third in a row, heading into an off-week with a 1-3 overall record. Ellsworth improved to 4-0 on the young season, winning all four games by double figures.

“We battled, and we got shots, too,” Fassett said. “In some other games, we weren't really getting shots, but this game, we were getting shots. We probably started out shooting like 0-for-10. Like I told the girls after the game, we can't keep digging ourselves holes and having to dig ourselves back out of it. That's a tough way to play. I like the shots we got early. Now, we've just got to finish them.”

“These were two very tough teams (this weekend),” Norse freshman guard Makenna Hendrickson of Baraga said. “We're going to learn from our mistakes. Now we know what we need to work on and what we can get better at. It was kind of hard to make a basket early. But I think they will fall, eventually.”

The Norse were up against, literally, a team filled with international players. Ellsworth's roster included two women from Iceland, four from Spain, and one each from Nigeria and Kosovo. There were three players from Iowa and one from Kansas.

“I find it hard enough to recruit in Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan, let alone overseas,” Fassett laughed. “It takes some effort and it takes some work. I think there are some opportunities to find some international kids. And down here at Ellsworth Community College, they've definitely found that.”

Marin Lind Augustsdottir (5-6 sophomore from Iceland) was tough with her quickness, breaking the Bay press and scoring eleven points in the first quarter. She ended up with 15 points. And Favour Nimecha Anyaele (5-3 sophomore from Nigeria) was also tough, as she had a double-double of 17 points and ten rebounds for Ellsworth.

Hendrickson says it was interesting to play against so many foreign students.

“They were speaking English, but they definitely had accents,” Hendrickson said, in her Copper Country accent. “They're from all over. It's cool. I definitely did hear different accents.”

One factor of the game: fouls. There were a combined 49 personal fouls called on the two teams, leading to 59 free throws being attempted in the game. Both teams shot them well (Bay was 21-of-26, Ellsworth was 24-of-33). But Fassett says the number of whistles led to a choppy game without much flow.

“We were attacking as much as we could, and that lends itself to having a lot of fouls called,” he said. “We were trying to get downhill and beat their guards. But, I guess, in the college game, the two-hand check, and the body contact, is called quite a bit.”

Menominee High School graduate Anna Axtell followed up Friday's 21-point scoring performance by scoring a game-high 23 points in Saturday night's game.

She did it on 7-of-15 shooting from the floor, and Axtell added eleven rebounds for a double-double that will make her a prime candidate for MCCAA Conference Player of the Week.

Kennedy Sproule also added a double-double of eleven points and ten rebounds, although she scored her points while shooting 4-of-23 from the field. Bay College is now off until Gogebic Community College comes to town for a game on Nov. 20. Bay and GCC will meet again on Nov. 26 in Ironwood.