Holy Trinity girls find win in regular season finale

FORT MADISON - Victory sounded good to Holy Trinity girls basketball coach Shawn Hopper.
“It was nice to see the girls happy,” Hopper said after Monday’s 49-31 win over Clark County at Shottenkirk Gym. “We’ve kind of had a rough stretch. So, it was a good night.”
It was the final regular-season game for the Crusaders (5-15), who have a little bit of a good feeling heading into Thursday’s Class 1A regional tournament opener at North Cedar. They have won two of their last three games.
“We talked about it being the last home game of the year, the last home game for Izzy (Behne, the Crusaders’ lone senior),” Hopper said. “It’s nice to have a little momentum heading into the (regional tournament), because I think the team we’re playing is one we can be competitive with.”
Holy Trinity was coming off a 47-25 loss to Wapello in the Southeast Iowa Super Conference Shootout last Thursday after winning 36-15 over New London earlier in the week.
“We were flat,” Hopper said of the Shootout game. “And I think what happens with us is we play decent defense, and then we start missing shots, and then we lose a little bit of our focus. And so we talked about that, worked on that a little bit, about how you’ve just got to play through that. I felt like we got away from creating offense from our defense. So we talked about trying to create a little more off our defense tonight.”

The Crusaders led 21-14 at halftime, then outscored Clark County 12-3 in the third quarter.
“I thought we really shut them down in the second half,” Hopper said.
The Crusaders also took advantage of the foul-prone Indians, going to the free-throw line 19 times in the second half, making 11.
Holy Trinity was 18 of 30 in free throws for the game.
“We made some free throws, and I was really happy with our effort tonight,” Hopper said.
Clark County had no answer for Holy Trinity forward Adalyn Kruse, who had 19 points. Elizabeth Griffin had nine points, and Olivia Bendlage and Morgan Krogmeier each had eight points.
“I thought we did a lot of good things,” Hopper said. “It was a nice way to end the (regular) season at home.”