Rough first half spells doom for Raiders

Now that the Hastings girls basketball team is in the midst of its grueling Suburban East Conference schedule, wins will be even harder to come by for the Raiders.

That’s what made last week’s 60-39 loss to East Ridge rough on coach Mike Harp.

“That’s a team we could beat,” Harp said. “We didn’t give our best effort of the year. We have to play for 36 minutes. We have to come out hard from the get-go and we didn’t do that. We felt that was an opportunity we let slip away.”

Hastings fell behind in a big way in the first half, going down 37-16 at halftime.

The second half was much different, with the two teams playing even with 23 points a piece.

Harp has come to expect a great effort from his team, night in and night out. He’s been thrilled by their hustle, but that wasn’t the case in the first half against East Ridge.

“We didn’t have a lot of effort,” he said. “It was one of the few times this year where the girls came out and didn’t play hard. That hasn’t been the case this year—they had played hard every day.”

Hastings was able to cut the Raptors’ lead to 11 points at one point in the second half, but they couldn’t get any closer than that.

“Unfortunately we dug ourselves too big of a hole,” Harp said.

Hanna Norman led the Raiders in scoring with 16 points.

“She had a very nice game for us,” Harp said.

Jordan Marshall was also in double figures with 10 points. She also had nine rebounds.

Also scoring were: Lexie Harp 5, Lauren Thomas 3, Sabrina Astar 2, Morgan Tjomsland 2 and Jill Weinzettel 1.

Tags: raider basketball, sports, hastings, minnesota, spiral, prep