“Their physicality and just as strong as they are — their girls, work out, you can tell,” Cedar Mountain head coach Brook Christensen said. “They’re just strong at everything they do, they finish at the hoop, and they’ve just got three, four girls who can just shoot the lights out whenever they want. Not a fast start for us at all, and you can’t start slow against a team like this, because once you’re behind, it’s hard to get back into it.

“I just wish that the start would have been a bit better for us, because once we started to settle in and score, it seemed like we were kind of swapping points back and forth with them. But at the end of the day, you can’t do that against them either, you’ve got to make defensive stops, clean up the rebounds — kind of some of the goals we had going into it — but we couldn’t get it done tonight.”

Aubrey Steffl led the Cougars with 20 points, eight rebounds, five steals and four assists, while Kendra Lueck had 12 points, four rebounds and five steals. Kendra Erickson added 6 points, nine rebounds and three assists.

Cedar Mountain struggled with turnovers early on as BOLD had a hot start, with the Warriors taking a 38-5 lead to open the game.

Staff photo by Ari Selvey Cedar Mountain’s Aubrey Steffl backs down a defender during the Section 2A Girls Basketball Tournament Semifinals against BOLD Monday at Gustavus Adolphus College.

“It wasn’t about getting bad looks, we had looks, but shots weren’t falling right away,” Christensen said. “If you ain’t scoring when they’re scoring right away, and then they’re scoring every time — I think maybe only one or two possessions at the beginning where they didn’t have buckets on.

“That was one of our goals in the locker room that we talked about was making sure that we got out to a fast start, because when we played them up in Bird Island we didn’t do that well against them with the start. They’re a good team. They’re going to give St. Mary’s a challenge. It will be interesting to see how that one turns out.”

Erickson got Cedar Mountain going with a layup, and another lay from Steffl had the score at 40-9. However, BOLD continued to score, and a 3 from Lueck and a putback and a layup from Steffl still had the Cougars down 44-16. Steffl added a 3-pointer before half to put the score at 45-19.

BOLD went on a 6-0 run to start the second half before Steffl made a 3 to make it a 51-22 game. Grace Hamre scored two layups in transition to cut the lead to 51-26, but BOLD stayed strong on offense as well, stretching the lead to 61-28. A trio of layups from Lueck and a layup from Steffl made it a 61-34 game as BOLD called a timeout, but the rally ended there. BOLD sent in the subs with four minutes to play, and Cedar Mountain followed suit two minutes later.

Cedar Mountain finishes its season with a 23-6 record.

“Locker room talk at the end of the game, it’s something to hang our hats on,” Christensen said. “The program hasn’t seen a 20-win season since 2016, so we’re right there. Getting to this point with a lot of young girls we’re returning next year. Just getting to this stage and what the feels of this court gives you and the game is something that we’re just going to push forward and hopefully get better.

“Proud of the girls, every single one of them. It’s been a fun season. Only losing two games at home and only losing six total, that’s a pretty good season regardless of the score tonight.”