Girls end season at Lone Tree

Girls end season at Lone Tree

The Hillcrest girls ended their season at Lone Tree in a loss to the Lions, 16-59.

The Ravens got down early as Lone Tree came out with aggressive full court pressure, and they were never quite able to recover. The Ravens were held scoreless through the first but jumped on the board in the opening minutes of the second quarter behind a bucket from Esther Hughes. Yani Gutierrez got in on the action moments later when she drew a foul and knocked down one out of two from the free throw line. Leah Bontrager added a bucket inside to end the first half as Hillcrest went into the locker room down 8-32 at the break.

Out of the break the Ravens struggled to find the bottom of the net but mid-way through the third quarter they were able to slow down the Lady Lions with a strong defensive stand. Danae McGaffey got in on the action by knocking down a baseline jumper to end the third, but the deficit was too much to overcome.

“This was a tough one,” Hillcrest head coach Kari Heusinkveld said. “We made a lot of progress over the last 3-4 weeks of our season though and we will choose to look at that rather than how our final game turned out. I’m proud of this group for not giving up and continuing to fight the whole way through the year. There were so many spurts of solid basketball this past month and we certainly saw that come together in our win the other week on senior night. We are especially grateful to our seniors Sarena Gerber, Mia Graber and Danae McGaffey, for their efforts this season and for the many memories on and off the court.”

Hughes led the Ravens with nine points, two steals and five rebounds. Gutierrez added three points and seven rebounds, while Bontrager and McGaffey rounded out the scoring with a bucket each. Bontrager also pulled in five rebounds.

Hillcrest ends the 2019-2020 season at 2-20.