And while the Tigers held the Indians to 44 points, Sleepy Eye proved to have a strong defensive game plan of its own as it came away with a 44-35 win.

“We played a little zone tonight,” Sleepy Eye head coach Grant Romberg said. “This is the first time we’ve played any zone all year. Typically we’re just a pressure man team, and that does well for us. But it was a three-game week this week, so we decided to run a 2-3 to give our legs a little break. It worked well, it helped throw them off-balance a little bit, not letting them into a rhythm when we switched up defenses.”

Springfield head coach Decker Scheffler said the plan was to limit Sleepy Eye’s interior scorers on the night.

“Our goal was to hold them under 45, and I thought if we did that we’d have a good chance of winning,” he said. “We held them under 45 and we didn’t win. Jada [Reese] did an outstanding job on [Taylor] Berkner, she’s a great player and a really great outside shooter. I just wanted to keep Jada on her the whole time so she didn’t have the opportunity, say if we were playing a basic zone, to shoot open 3s. They had a couple that aren’t as good outside shooters, so with how short-handed we were, we were just going to let them shoot that instead of running corner to paint and getting tired.”

Staff photo by Ari Selvey Springfield’s Jada Reese (5) goes up for a layup while defended by Sleepy Eye’s Jace Schauman (23) during a Tomahawk Division girls basketball game Thursday at Sleepy Eye High School.

But Sleepy Eye found enough scoring to come away with the win despite only making three 3-pointers on the night.

“We obviously didn’t shoot it well from the perimeter, which they were giving us, and I guess for good reason, because we weren’t hitting it,” Romberg said. “We were able to use the high post and the low post to overload them, and we were able to score out of that. We were finding the open player and were getting inside-out looks, and our mid-range shots were falling, so that helped us.”

Jaelynn Schauman had 12 points and six rebounds for the Indians, while Berkner had 10 points, eight rebounds, three assists and six assists. Destiney Dittbenner had 9 points, 13 rebounds and three steals, and Jace Schauman added 9 points, four rebounds and three steals.

Jada Reese led the Tigers with 19 points, while Isabella Groebner had 9 points.

Sleepy Eye started the game with an 8-0 run, with Jaelynn Schauman scoring two layups during the stretch. Springfield got on the board with a layup from Groebner, and a layup by Noelle Reese put the score at 12-6. Both defenses locked down for much of the rest of the first half, but Sleepy Eye closed out the first half with a 6-0 run, with Jaelynn Schauman scoring twice more to give Sleepy Eye a 23-14 halftime lead.

Bernker opened the second half with a layup, but Springfield stayed in it with a cutting layup from Jada Reese. Sleepy Eye extended the lead out to 36-17 on a paint shot from Jaelynn Schauman, and Sleepy Eye called a timeout with 5:44 to play with a 41-23 lead after a mid-range shot from Jada Reese. Springfield went on a 9-1 run, with Jada Reese scoring 4 and Groebner scoring 5, to cut the lead to 42-32 and force another Sleepy Eye timeout with 1:43 to play. But Sleepy Eye’s defense put an end to the drama, and a 3 by Reese as the buzzer sounded wasn’t enough to overcome the Indians lead.

“They did a good job of mixing between man and zone,” Scheffler said. “There would be times where we had one thing called, and they’d come out in the opposite of what we were expecting to see. We had one of our best outside shooters out with the flu today, so that was tough for us, but we’ve still got to be able to adjust to that. And we missed some bunnies, a lot of inside bunnies. We had a problem with that earlier in the year, then it got better, but it came back tonight.”

Sleepy Eye (8-6, 5-3) plays at Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s on Monday, while (6-5, 5-3) plays at New Ulm Cathedral on Tuesday.