Cardinals back to .500 with win at Bessemer

By JASON JUNO

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Bessemer — Wakefield-Marenisco and Bessemer both ended the 2024 portion of their schedule on a good note.

The Cardinals won their second straight game, a 72-45 victory over the Speedgirls Thursday night, and got back to .500 in time for the holiday break.

“I was hoping for 4-2 at this point,” W-M coach Alex Metas said. “We stumbled in the Ironwood game, so we’re going to have to settle for 3-3 and just continue to work harder to be able to make up some ground, what we lost with the loss in the first game.”

W-M doesn’t shoot very well, but they get a lot of shots when they can turn teams over like they did to Bessemer. They were 24 of 64 from the field while the Speedgirls took half as many shots.

“They can hurt you in a variety of different ways,” Bessemer coach Max France said. “They’ve got height, they’ve got some talented guards, and they’re young, so they’re only going to be getting better. They’ve got a good press as well, they pressured our girls. We were able to break that press, but that half-court court pressure got us. Every now and then, we just had to reset, we’d get out of control letting the ball go, dribbling it into corners. They do a good job of getting us into corners.”

The Speedgirls didn’t get the good result, but they increased their level of play after some rough losses, more than doubling their previous best offensive output of the young season.

“I thought we played a lot better,” France said. “Clean up some of the lazy passes and make some more bunnies and layups and we can be in that game. I’m really proud of the way they played.”

Bessemer lost to some tough competition in their most recent games, playing well against Ewen-Trout Creek and better now against W-M, but struggling against Ironwood and North Dickinson.

“That’s a gauntlet,” France said. “We had our ups and downs through it, but I thought we ended on a good note for us where we played much better than we have been. I’m looking forward to these two weeks of no games, and practice so we can hone in on some of those little things we’ve been missing. Once we have those, we’ll be in some of those games.”

The wins and losses at this point aren’t a big deal.

“The results will come,” France said. “It’s a rebuilding thing going with a new coach, new ballhandlers from last year. The results will come, I’m just happy with the progress.”

W-M’s Carine Cole had a big night with 26 points, Emily Delfavero scored 13 and Emma Choronzy had 10.

Cole sprained her ankle in the second game of the season and had been limited until now.

“Carine had a beautiful game,” Metas said. “That was Carine’s best game so far this year. And I know, and I trust her that she’s going to continue to build off of that.”

Bessemer’s Audrey Stone finished with 24 points and 16 rebounds and Keira Graham had a dozen points.

“I’m really, really happy the way Audrey played today,” France said. “We’ve been really trying to focus on getting the ball inside and we did a lot better with that today. When we start seeing the press break working, we get a lot of easy looks, some of them have to start going in.”

Stone has played well against the rival Cardinals.

“She is a tough girl to stop,” Metas said. “I think she is probably after Christmas here going to have a really good second half.”

W-M (3-3) hosts Lake Linden-Hubbell on Jan. 3 for their home opener. The Lakes, a regional semifinalist last year, beat them 69-53 in the first meeting; Cole had just her ankle at that time. Bessemer (0-5) hosts Hurley on Jan. 6.

W-M — Ellie Libertoski 2, Emily Delfavero 13, Katelyn Stanislawski 4, Noelle Grace 4, Carine Cole 26, Kenly Anderson 9, Kashine McGeshick 4, Emma Choronzy 10. FTs: 11-13. Fouls: 23. Fouled out: Anderson. 3-pointers: Choronzy 2, Anderson 1, Cole 1, Delfavero 1.

Bessemer — Keira Graham 12, Makenzie Montgomery 2, Maddie Guglielmotto 3, Makyala Montgomery 4, Audrey Stone 24. FTs: 13-26. Fouls: 12. Fouled out: None. 3-pointers: None.

W-M 17 35 60 72

Bessemer 9 16 26 45