The Glen Lake girls' basketball team shined on the hardwood at The Palace of Auburn Hills Friday afternoon by edging Buckley, 37-28.

Anna Brown of Glen Lake dribbles before
attempting a free throw in a game played
Friday at The Palace of Auburn Hills.

The win put the Lakers at 7-3 in the Northwest Conference, and left a lifetime of memories for the players.

The Bears held a 6-3 lead after the first quarter before Glen Lake started hitting shots to take a 15-14 lead at the half. Buckley came back and regained a 26-23 lead after three quarters, and the game continued to seesaw in the second half.

Glen Lake coach Pete Woessner said winning on the Detroit Pistons’ home court was a thrilling experience for the team. “This was probably our best total team effort that we had this year. We have had a lot of sickness the past two weeks and we were still not entirely healthy going into this game,” he said.

At first, the Lakers were a little awed. Woessner added that the court was much longer than the players are used to, but Glen Lake hung in and outlasted the Bears.

“Our press was ineffective against Buckley, so we changed from zone to man-to-man depending on if Buckley’s Kaitlin Moyer was in or not,” he said.

The strategy worked through the first half. But, Moyer and the Bears came out in the third to surge ahead. Woessner said Moyer went out later in the third with a knee injury, which changed how the Lakers played defense.

“We switched back to our man-to-man in the fourth, which really caused a lot of problems of the Buckley. They were only able to score two points on free throws the rest of the way,” Woessner said.

Anna Brown scored 11 points and had 6 rebounds to lead Glen Lake, with Kayla Murphy netting 9 points.

Leland and Suttons Bay girls’ teams did not fare as well against conference opponents over the weekend.

On Friday Leland hosted Benzie and lost 59-32. Coach Jon Kiessel said the Comets had no answer for Benzie’s 6-foot-2 center, Maria Blazejewski.

“She scored 20 points on us and we just could not stop her,” he said.

Even with Benzie’s height advantage, Leland kept within striking distance and trailed by eight points at the half. Kiessel said the Comets started strong in the third quarter, but couldn’t stop the Huskies from scoring. “They got up on us by 12 points and we never got the lead down to single digits for the rest of the game,” he said.

Erin Sneed scored 10 points to lead Leland, with Erica Breen adding 9.

Suttons Bay suffered its worst defeat of the season at Kingsley Friday night, 62-11. Coach Fred Wille had little to say about the game. Three of his starters were out for various reasons.

“We had five players to go against the best team in our league this year,” he said. Biri Luna was the Norse’s top scorer with six points.

Glen Lake will play at Manistee tonight, and will host Benzie for Parent’s Night on Saturday. The starting time for the junior varsity game on Saturday has been moved to 1 p.m., with the varsity taking the floor at around 2:30 p.m. Suttons Bay will host Buckley on Saturday and will host T-C Christian on Tuesday. Leland will host Frankfort on Saturday.