After having their Friday night game postponed due to weather, the Chargers were unable to find their shot throughout much of Saturday’s nonconference girls basketball game with Waseca as the Bluejays held on for a 66-57 win.

The Bluejays (3-13) did play Friday night at home against the New Ulm Eagles. While the Eagles ran away with a 79-38 win in that game, the Bluejays were able to bounce back offensively against the Chargers (7-6) and turn in a season high in points.

After falling behind 13 in the first half, the Chargers started pressing more and got some turnovers for points out of it. However, the shots weren’t falling consistently for the Chargers either and they also struggled with turnovers of their own.

“Sometimes being fresh doesn’t mean that you’re naturally going to play better,” Morgan said. “I think not playing [Friday] didn’t help us. But [Waseca] hit some shots and we missed some bunnies. We’ve got to focus a little bit more on the short shots and our whole game.

Staff photo by Travis Rosenau Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Violet Hammer looks to get a shot off in the first half of Saturday’s nonconference girls basketball game against Waseca at MVL High School.

“I think all of the sudden we panicked a little bit, which was a good test for us, because you get in adversity, you’ve gotta battle through it and we did against St. Clair and now we’ve got to continue to build on what we’re doing. We’ll bounce back from this.”

Violet Hammer led the Chargers with 16 points and three steals, while Avery Freier had 15 points and two steals. Ziva Zahrt added 7 points and 13 rebounds, while Olivia Hammer had 7 points, Taryn Freier added six rebounds and Avery Hahn had 5 points, 13 rebounds and four steals.

Reese Rodriguez led the Bluejays with 21 points and 10 rebounds, getting 18 of her points off of six 3-pointers. Ava Miller added 17 points and five rebounds, while Audrianna Willingham had 9 points.

Waseca shot 35% from the floor, while the Chargers shot 25%.

An ugly start for the Chargers left them with a 10-point hole to dig out of after halftime. Missing on their first six shots, the Chargers were finally able to get something to drop in on a jumper from Olivia Hammer.

Staff photo by Travis Rosenau Minnesota Valley Lutheran’s Taryn Freier drives in for a layup during the second half of Saturday’s nonconference girls basketball game against Waseca at MVL High School.

The Bluejays answered inside on the other end on a bucket from Hannah Sommers and took the lead after a steal for a layup. Turnovers didn’t help the Chargers’ cause either in the first half, but they were able to create a share of Waseca turnovers on the other hand to keep things within striking distance.

After Rodriguez drained her third 3 of the half to put Waseca up 18-6, Olivia Hammer got a 3 back to have MVL down 18-9 with 8:01 left in the half.

The Chargers continued to struggle finding the bottom of the basket on layups and bunnies, however, as Waseca stretched its lead to 23-9 moments later.

The Chargers did make a nice push and capitalized on a full-court press to generate some offense late. A reverse layup by Tori Ringen kicked off a 7-0 run for the Chargers. After that layup, Avery Freier had a steal for a layup and then the Chargers forced a five-second inbounds violation on the baseline, which ended up giving them the ball back and getting a 3 by Avery Freier to trail 27-21.

Waseca pushed its lead back to double figures before the end of the half, though, leading 33-23 at halftime.

After a putback bucket by Zahrt, Zahrt dished off a pass from the low block to the corner, where Avery Freier caught it and knocked down a 3 to have MVL down 36-31. The Bluejays took a double-digit lead back soon after with a 6-0 run, forcing Morgan to take a timeout with 12:13 left and his team down 42-31.

The Chargers got a 7-0 run out of the timeout as Taryn Freier got a defensive rebound and took it all the way down the court for a layup off the glass. Buckets from Avery Freier and Olivia Hammer made it a 5-point game again, before a free throw from Ringen had MVL down 42-38 with 8:46 left to play.

That was the closest MVL was able to get after that, however, as Waseca pushed its lead to double digits for the fifth time in the game. Waseca’s biggest lead came on a 3 from Rodriguez with 5:45 left to put her team up 56-42.

The Chargers made one more late push when Zahrt converted on an and-one with 1:39 left in the game, but Waseca made four late free throws to hold on.

The Chargers had 15 steals in the game, most coming from their press, but often times they came up empty-handed or giving the ball right back to the Bluejays, something that made a comeback hard to complete in the end.

“We get excited about [forcing turnovers], so we all want to be involved, we all move up instead of playing your position and playing what you know and what you’re supposed to do,” Morgan said. “I’ve got to give them kudos for wanting to be there and get into that, but we were just too eager to get it all back at once, where you’ve got to whittle away at the thing. We lost our composure a little bit because things weren’t going our way right away.”

MVL hosts Maple River in a South Central Conference game on Thursday.

NOTE: This story and its photos will be printed in Tuesday’s edition of The Journal.