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Victory times three

The first week of the season has been awfully good to the Alpena girls basketball team.

Emma Jore scored 10 points, Jasmyn Schultz added seven and Morgan Allen and Shelby Seaver chipped in with six each as the Wildcats won their third game in a row on Thursday, beating Petoskey 39-33.

The win not only gave Alpena a win in its Big North Conference opener, the victory gave the Wildcats their first three game winning streak since January 2014 when they won three straight in the midst of a 7-15 season.

“It means a lot, especially getting our first win in the Big North, that’s really important. We’ve been battling through some injuries this week and it shows we have a good bench and we can play through some adversity,” Alpena co-coach Steve McCourt said. “We get along and we’re having fun.”

Playing its third game in four nights, the Wildcats (3-0, 1-0 Big North) overcame a slow start and broke the game open in the second quarter, outscoring the Northmen 19-5 to take a 27-15 halftime lead.

The Wildcats picked up their intensity on both ends of the floor, stifling Petoskey (1-3, 0-1 Big North) on defense and spreading the ball around offensively. Seven different players scored for Alpena in the win.

Sharing the offensive load has been a common theme for Alpena during preseason practices and during the first week of the season. It’s worked well so far as nine different players scored in Monday’s win over Alcona and six players scored the next night in a victory over Tawas.

“Our offense, we just have a lot of girls moving through so we’re not really stagnant in any spot,” Alpena co-coach Kelley Miko said. “Whenever you have somebody moving through and people working together, the ball gets in other peoples hands and we look inside and outside so every spot is hopefully a threat to the other team.”

Alpena held Petoskey in check during the third quarter, limiting the Northmen to a single field goal, which game with 50 seconds left when Megan Sysko scored. Prior to that, Alpena reeled off a 9-0 to take a 36-15 lead which seemingly put the game out of reach.

It wasn’t until late in the fourth quarter that Petoskey made the Wildcats a little uncomfortable. A basket from Sysko cut the lead to single digits with 1:11 left and a basket from Brooke Redes made it 37-30 with 28 seconds to play.

The Northmen ran out of time however, even as a Cydnee Schlueter three-pointer with 15 seconds left cut Alpena’s lead to five, 38-33.

Sysko paced Petoskey with nine points, Schlueter added eight and Megan Hannah had six.

Alpena plays at Cheboygan on Monday.

Alpena’s JV team won 46-24 over the Northmen. Tori Gentry led Alpena with 15 points, Alysa Sommerfield added 12 points and Maddie Voltz chipped in with seven.

ALPENA (39): M. Allen 3 0-0 6; A. Smith 1 0-1 3; J. Schultz 2 3-6 7; S. Seaver 2 2-2 6; J. Marwede 1 1-2 3; E. Jore 3 3-4 10; M. Murphy 0 0-2 0; C. Dzuris 2 0-0 4.

PETOSKEY (33): K. Daniel 0 0-1 0; M. Sysko 4 1-5 9; B. Redes 1 0-0 2; C. Schlueter 3 0-0 8; I. Anderson 2 0-0 4; J. Byers 2 0-1 4; M. Hannah 3 0-0 6.

James Andersen can be reached via email at sports@thealpenanews.com or by phone at 358-5694. Follow James on Twitter @ja_alpenanews.

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