Lady Eagles advance in Delta tournament

Oran now moves into the consolation finals

DELTA -- In the second round of the Delta New Years Tournament on Wednesday night, the Oran Lady Eagles got their game started off with a 10-2 run against the Chaffee Lady Devils.

That would pretty much be all the cushion they would need as they breezed past the Lady Devils 55-36.

Most of that cushion was provided by Oran's defense. Their press caused a total of 30 turnovers and 19 steals.

"We don't have an attacking press but we really try to take the middle away and the kids are buying into that," Oran head coach Adam Friga said. "They're doing a good job. It still isn't good but it was good enough tonight. We'll take it. Anytime you cause that many turnovers, that's a good thing."

Claire Seyer was on the receiving end of a few errant passes due to the Lady Eagles pressure to lead the team with five steals as Oran built an 18-8 first quarter lead.

They would go into halftime leading 31-22.

"Our girls made a lot of errors," Chaffee head coach Courtney Urhahn said. "Those are things that we need to work on and improve in practice."

Another thing that the Lady Eagles tried to do was limit Chaffee standout Amber Kirk.

"I'm glad that Chaffee has only one Amber Kirk," Friga said. "She's tough. She got hers tonight. She can shoot the ball and we knew that. We did our best and tonight it worked out for us."

The No. 3 seeded Oran was in a man defense once the Lady Devils got the ball on their side of the court and there was always someone staying close to Kirk.

"She's the best shooter on the team. I don't blame them," Urhahn said about Kirk. "They were maning up hardcore on her."

Kirk scored 21 of Chaffee's 36 points. Taylor Kirchdoerfer was Chaffee's next highest scorer with eight.

Cheyanne King led Oran with 14 points she also grabbed five rebounds and dished three assists. Kirstie Mangels added nine points and three steals while Seyer, Abbey Anderson and Taylor Tenkhoff each added six points a piece. Seyer also grabbed seven rebounds and Tenkhoff brought down six boards.

Even though the Lady Eagles pulled out the victory over the No. 7 seed Lady Devils and advanced to the consolation championship, Friga believes that his team isn't playing their best basketball at this time of the season and said that this early in the year, it is all a build-up for district time.

"We're not playing very good right now," Friga said. "It's early in the year for us and we're worried about working towards February because of that district tournament and that's when we want to be playing good. We'll just keep playing basketball and just try to get better."

Oran, (2-3) will now take on the Woodland Lady Cardinals for the consolation title on Saturday at 1 p.m.