Cardinal girl basketball drop opener
By Tom Obert
Cub Reporter
The Cards fell to the conference pre-season favorite in their home opener last night, but it was a great game for the fans. Tech is a very good team with three excellent guards and a big 6'2" center, who was unstoppable when she got the ball down low. Nevertheless, the Cards could have very easily won this game because of two words: Angela Christianson.
Angela was the leading scorer and rebounder on the team last year as a 5'11" freshman. This year, she has grown an inch to 6'0," making her the tallest player on the team, and while she is still on the slender side, she is obviously stronger than she was last year. And she is just a natural ball player who is not limited to a position - she can play all five of them. She's a ball hawk on defense who can steal a pass and then dribble the length of the floor through traffic, she has quick low post moves to score inside, she can use spin moves off the dribble to get inside, and she can shoot the three (she probably had 3 last night). She had 28 points and 14 rebounds in their opening overtime loss at Brainerd, the other conference pre-season favorite - and last night she had 32 points despite . . .
with her in the game, the Cardinals had a nice lead, as I recall around 9 points, when she picked up her second foul with about 10 minutes left in the first half - she already had 13 points at that time. Our coach had to put her on the bench then to protect her, and in about the 7 minutes she sat out, the Cards did not score a single point and Tech went on to take a 6 or 7 point lead. Not wanting the game to get out of hand, the coach had to put Angela back in for the final three minutes of the half. You could just see the whole team's confidence pick up with Angela back in, and they scooted from 25 points to 38 in the final minutes to take a 3 point lead at the half.
Then in the 2nd half, Angela appeared to have caught an elbow to the schnoz, and had to sit for a few minutes while her head cleared - and any time she was off the court, Tech would go on a spurt. The loudest cheers of the night from the sizeable group of Tech fans were when Angela picked up her 3rd, and later her 4th foul (on a really bogus charging call, in this reporter's obviously unbiased opinion, that negated another end-to-end dash for a lay-up) - they knew the outcome of the game was solely dependent upon whether or not Angela was in the game, and free to play without the onus of picking up her 5th foul. To Tech's credit, they held on to win the game with some marvelous play at the end from their star guard, who finished up with 28 points.
I mentioned to school superintendent Terry Quist and school board member Jim Hafdal during the game that they are going to have to hold the college recruiters at bay for the next three years. They nodded in agreement, for unless we miss our guess, Angela is on her way to being a Division 1 prospect.
So, it looks like it's going to be an interesting season - the Cards took the two conference favorites down to the wire in the their opening games. Obviously, Angela is the key player, but we have a lot of depth with younger players (including Gracie Bruzek, Bud's daughter) who should develop as the season progresses. And, just taking a flyer here, I could not tell whether Ally Teclaw was available last night - she is on the roster and we best know her as the centerfielder on the softball team - but she's 5'10," is a good athlete with speed, so I'm going to make the assumption that she would have to be a contributor to the basketball team.
