NHS Girls win at Ft. Morgan, lose season final to Northridge

Niwot High School's varsity girls basketball team picked up its fourth win of the season at Fort Morgan High School (52-35) before dropping the final game of the season at home to Greeley's Northridge High School (60-20).

Coach Jon Hill called the Fort Morgan victory "a good win for us. We started really slow and could tell Ft. Morgan was giving us everything they had."

"Rose (Pacheco) got in foul trouble early making it really difficult to get an offense going," Hill said. Fortunately the Cougars came out with renewed energy to start the third quarter and proceeded to play what Hill called their "best third quarter of the year. Our defense and energy on the bench really drove us toward the win."

Along with defense, Niwot brought a balanced offense featuring double figure scoring from Evelyn Melis (11) and Rose Pacheco (10) along with nine points from Ella Zechman, eight points from Tiffany Yie and five points from Madison Ackerman.

Haddie Adams, Peyton Rhodes, Molly Slupik and Chloe Mitchell also scored. Rebounding was a similar story with a nearly equal distribution between Melis (8), Slupik (7), Yie (7), Mitchell (6), and Pacheco (6), with Adams (4) and Ackerman (1) also adding to the total.

Two days later, at home versus Northridge (15-8), the Cougars were unable to do it again, falling by the score of 60-20 and sending the Grizzlies to the playoffs where they will face 16-7 Pueblo West.

Niwot, which finished the season with a 4-18 record, struggled to find a rhythm or get much traction offensively from the start. The Cougars found themselves down 12-2 after the first period. Once Northridge established a comfortable lead, Northridge began taking more shots from outside, making a few three-pointers before closing out the first half with two in a row from behind the arc to make the score 46-14.

Despite the lopsided score, Niwot battled to the end, exciting the crowd with a few coast-to-coast fast-break attempts, aggressive defense and a couple steals. With less than a minute to go, Cat Omer came off the bench and put up a textbook bank shot for the game's final points.

Niwot will graduate just two seniors, Yie and Peyton Burnett, with the rest of the squad slated to return next season.