Joey Payeur
And now for something completely different.
One week after splitting a pair of home exhibition games against separate opponents, the Rainy River Community College Voyageurs women’s basketball team earned another split against the same two in Brainerd, Mn. on Saturday.
Only this time around, the tables were turned twice.
After beating St. Cloud Tech on home court, the Voyageurs fell 91-84 to the Cyclones this past weekend.
But with only seven players making the trip due to injury or personal commitments, the Voyageurs dug deep and came away with a 74-73 victory over Minnesota State-Fergus Falls after the Spartans had prevailed in overtime at RRCC.
“We went in wanting to take both but we didn’t have all our players, either,” noted former Muskie Cassandra Moffitt, who is in her first year at RRCC.
“We arrived late for the first game and didn’t have enough warm-up time, so that’s a reason we didn’t play our best,” she added.
Moffitt played just 22 minutes in the loss—going 0-for-4 from the field while scoring her only point via a free throw.
She added two rebounds and a steal.
Then, after the Spartans had chewed up the Voyageurs in the paint the previous week, Moffitt and the rest of RRCC’s defence provided a much more effective front in the rematch.
Haley Poehler, who burned RRCC for 30 points in the previous encounter, was held to just 14 on Saturday.
The teams were tied 29-29 at halftime, with the second half a virtual tale of two quarters.
A determined Voyageurs’ cast came out strong in the third—outscoring the Spartans 29-15.
But then in the fourth, it was RRCC hanging on for dear life as the Spartans edged ever closer before coming up just short.
“In the third, we took our time and set up our offence and not forcing the ball,” noted Moffitt, whose stats in the win were unavailable as of press time.
“But in the fourth, we had two players foul out and we nearly ran out of gas.”
Last Tuesday, the Voyageurs hosted the Prince George’s Community College Owls (Largo, Md.) in an entertaining contest that ended with the home side victorious 68-61.
RRCC led 18-12 after the first quarter and were up 38-24 by halftime, with Moffitt netting her only two points of the game with a lay-up in the closing seconds.
But the Owls steadily clawed back into the game on the basis of gradually building foul trouble for the Voyageurs.
RRCC eventually was left with no bench players and clinging to a four-point lead with just under a minute to go.
But Moffitt, who pulled down the last of her 11 rebounds following an Owls’ miss with 40 seconds left, and her crew held fast to ice the victory.
“All we needed to do was slow it down in that final minute and I knew we needed that rebound,” said Moffitt.
“We didn’t need to rush it and pass it out to try to get another point when we already had that lead,” she reasoned.
“We had to play defence a little differently later in the game, and face them straight up and not go at them from the side, since we were in so much foul trouble,” Moffitt added.
RRCC head coach Dieter Humbert saluted his team for hanging in.
“There always seems to be some pretty athletic post players that we encounter and we’re usually a little under-sized,” he noted.
“But the team really stepped up when the game was on the line.”
Moffitt finished the pre-Christmas schedule averaging about five points and six rebounds in her 10 games, with the Voyageurs posting a 5-5 record.
“I think I did pretty well and improved a lot in everything,” she remarked.
“After the break, we’ll be getting two new players back who couldn’t play in the first semester, so that will help,” she added.
One of those two will be a centre, which may see Moffitt returning to her natural guard position after filling the job at the post position up until now.
“It’s possible I might be switched but I don’t know for sure yet,” she noted.
The Voyageurs return to action Jan. 6 in their final tune-up game against the Fond du Lac Tribal Thunder down in Cloquet.
The MCAC Northern Division regular-season then gets underway Jan. 8 with a home game against the Hibbing Cardinals.
