LAKEVILLE – The Triton High School girls basketball team shared the Northern State Conference title last year, but this year, the Lady Trojans took it all for their own. Picking up a 56-41 victory at LaVille Friday night, Class 1A No. 9 Triton wrapped up its regular season at 16-5 overall and with a perfect 7-0 mark in the NSC. Triton shared the NSC title with Bremen a year ago at 6-1, as well as Bremen during the 2002-03 season, when it also went 6-1. Their latest conference win, however gave the Lady Trojans their first outright championship since Mark Heeter’s 2000-01 team did it, going 7-0 before winning the Class 1A state championship. “This is the first time in a very long time we’ve won it outright,” Triton coach Adam Heckaman said. “Back-to-back years we’re conference champions and it’s been a long time since we did that. I told the girls at halftime, they’d be a special team if they came out here and did it. It’s something they’ll always be able to remember when they look up at the banners and see ‘2013’ right next to ‘2012’ (on the NSC champion banner).” Coming into the season, expectations were there to repeat as champions, but the games must be played, and Triton came out on top each time. “We had some big goals – Bi-County, conference and obviously making at run at sectional – as every team does,” Heckaman said. “They were legitimate goals for us. We struggled at Bi-County (losing to Class 1A No. 2 Oregon-Davis 80-36 in the championship game), but the girls took it one game at a time in the conference. One big game after another they’d step up and do what they needed to do. It was just a matter of finishing tonight.” Luckily they finished strong, but they certainly didn’t start strong. With the NSC crown theirs for the taking, the Lady Trojans came out sluggish, falling behind 9-2. “I think we thought it’d be a little bit easier than it was,” Heckaman said. “(LaVille’s) a good team. They’re going to go into their sectional, and they’re going to have a pretty good shot at winning it. We came out a little soft, weren’t getting after it, letting them score some easy buckets. Then, we’d make some mistakes on the offensive end and weren’t focused enough to make the free throws we needed. We talked about those things at half.” The lack of focus was evident at the free throw line, where Triton made just 5 of 12 in the first half, leading to a 20-18 deficit. But in the second half, sophomore Kylie Mason put the offensive load on her shoulders. Scoring 14 points on 6-of-7 shooting in the quarter, Mason helped her team take a 39-27 lead into the fourth. “She stepped up huge,” Heckaman said of the 5-foot-4 shooting guard, who ended up with 24 points on 10-of-17 shooting. “They played man-to-man (defense), and we got into our screen and roll offense and we were more aggressive going off the screens. We were looking to score and hit the open shooters.” Outscoring LaVille 21-7 in the third quarter, the Triton defense also stepped up. “We got after it, got some stops, scored right away and were able to tie it up and just got our confidence up,” Heckaman said. The defense was led by senior Shana Anderson, who posted four steals in a stellar all-around game, finishing with 15 points, seven rebounds, two assists and a blocked shot. Also for Triton, sophomore Krystal Sellers came off the bench to shoot perfectly from the field (2-2) and free throw line (4-4), scoring eight points, while junior Taylor Hatfield had a six-point, three-steal, two-assist game. Despite what a win would mean for the Triton program, Heckaman was concerned with his team’s focus coming into the game. “I was worried,” he said. “Not that we weren’t going to give an effort, because they always come out hard. Just the mental focus, sometimes, is a struggle. We hadn’t played in a week, we don’t play for another week and obviously sectionals are on the horizon, so they were thinking about that a little bit. Things like that are what I was worried about.” Triton now prepares for Class 1A Sectional 51 at Oregon-Davis, where it received a first-round bye. Instead of playing in the opening round, Triton will await the winner of Tuesday’s South Central/Culver game to see who it plays Friday at 6:30 p.m. “Hopefully this is a sign of things to come,” Heckaman said. “They’re building their confidence and it’s definitely an accomplishment.”
