ELY — After the string of games the Ely girls played this past week, a three-day break was a welcome opportunity for some respite and recalibration after a Thursday-Friday-Monday run that included losses to a strong Floodwood team and the state’s No. 1 team in Class A, Mt. Iron-Buhl, sandwiched around a rout of Cherry on Friday.
Home is where the Wolves picked up their tenth win of the season on Friday, dominating Cherry 66-28. Ely broke the game wide open in the first half, turning a narrow 5-4 lead into an insurmountable 31-8 halftime margin with a demoralizing 26-4 run against the Tigers. The second half played out much like the first did, with Ely’s smothering defense forcing bad shots by the Tigers and the Wolves converting rebounds and steals into points on the other end of the floor.
Ely Head Coach Tomi Cole said the team responded just as she had hoped after Thursday’s loss to Floodwood.
“We really needed a good performance from everyone and a rebound win,” Cole said. “We had greater tenacity than we did the night before and were far more aggressive on both ends of the floor than we have been. Lydia Shultz had a tremendous night for us with 23 points, seven steals and seven rebounds and helped elevate the energy level that we needed to come away with a win.”
Joining Shultz in double-figure scoring for the game were Ruby Lowe with 14 and Lillie O’Neill with 10.

Floodwood
Cole’s comments about the Cherry game gave a clue into what didn’t go right for Ely in Thursday’s 48-41 loss to Floodwood, the Wolves’ second of the season to the Polar Bears.
“We knew going in that we needed to play one of our better games in order to win, and we just didn’t do that,” Cole said. “Floodwood played well and capitalized on our errors throughout the game. We struggled to get something going offensively and at points it felt like we couldn’t buy a basket. The same things we struggled with against them back in December reappeared and it was a tough loss for us at home.”
The Wolves had trouble finding the hoop from three-point land against the Polar Bears, making only five of 25 attempts from beyond the arc. Shultz led the team in scoring with 14, and Amelia Penke added 12.

MIB
The only thing worse than having to take on the state’s coaches association pick as the best in Class A is having to do it on the road, but that was Ely’s task on Monday. Playing in front of a hostile crowd against an undefeated Rangers team averaging 83 points per game, the Wolves could at best keep their finger plugged in the dam to delay the inevitable flood of points as long as they could. That was about eight minutes, as the Wolves held tight with MIB leading 15-14. Shultz gave Ely an initial lead, and Zoe Mackenzie nailed consecutive threes to keep the Wolves within one. And then the dam disintegrated, as the Rangers outscored the Wolves 42-6 the rest of the half. It was little consolation that the Wolves managed to keep MIB five points under their scoring average in the 78-35 win.
“There isn’t much to say other than they are tough,” Cole said. “We started okay, we hit some shots and had a dose of momentum, but it certainly didn’t take long for MIB to take over. They do everything so well on both ends of the floor and make it incredibly challenging for teams to get something going. We struggled to get shots up, we didn’t rebound very well, and we committed far too many turnovers. MIB is number one in Class A for a reason. I have great respect for how those girls play and how hard they work. I thought our girls showed up to compete, and although the outcome wasn’t in our favor, I thought they worked hard until the end.”
Shultz was once again the leading scorer for Ely and the only one in double figures with 13 points.