The Hopkins High School girls’ basketball team celebrated seniors’ night Tuesday with a 42-37 non-league victory over visiting Allegan.
Martin, however, ran out of gas again in the late going in a 44-40 loss to Wyoming Potter’s House.
The Lady Vikings improved their overall record to 9-12 and will complete their regular season Thursday evening at Covenant Christian. They will play Plainwell Monday evening in the district tournament opener at Otsego High School.
The Lady Clippers also had seniors’ night, but the outcome was different. Martin led Potter’s House most of the way until the fourth quarter, taking the lead at the end of one quarter and up by four points, 30-26, at the end of three periods.
“We’re proud of the effort and fight our girls showed tonight,” said coach Ben Schipper. “We really focused on the details of our defense on Monday and we saw some good improvements implemented tonight that were encouraging. We’re really focusing on stopping the dribble drive much better. We did a good job of this in the first half, but our execution fell off in the fourth quarter and they scored 18 points to take the lead.
“It was nice to see some shots finally fall tonight as we’ve really struggled shooting the ball lately. We’re continuing to challenge our girls to be more of a threat on the catch and to play through contact. We need to get to the paint to either finish or make the defense collapse and then kick out to our teammates.
“Finally, we need to eliminate our unforced turnovers. Even though we had a lead throughout much of the game, it could have been greater as we had far too many possessions taken away by poor decisions passing and traveling calls.
The coach added, “We have a full week off to prepare for districts and we look forward to it being the best week of practice yet.”
Elizabeth Reinke led Martin with 12 points and Macy Thorne added eight. The defeat left Martin with a 13-8 overall season record to conclude the regular season.
Wayland will conclude its regular season on Thursday evening as well, at Cedar Springs in a battle for second place in the final O-K Gold Conference standings. Both teams are 10-3 in league play behind champion Grand Rapids Catholic Central.
