For a half, the Ely Timberwolves kept NCAA Division I-bound Marta Forsline in check.
But the 6-3 center from Mesabi East warmed up in the second half, and Ely had little answer.
Forsline, who is bound for Cal-Davis next fall, scored 20 of her game-high 30 points in the second half and the Giants erased a seven-point deficit and rallied for a 54-44 high school girls basketball victory at the Memorial Gymnasium.
Ely, which fell to 0-2, was hot early and hit five of its seven three-point baskets in the opening half.
The Wolves led by as many as seven points in the opening stanza and took a 28-23 lead into the locker room at the half.
But the second half was a different story, and Forsline began to dominate.
She helped spark a 12-0 run that gave the Giants the lead for good, and her defensive presence forced the Wolves to rely on outside shooting and they went cold.
“I thought we played well but it was definitely a tale of two halves,” said Ely Head Coach Tomi Cole. “The first half was significantly better. We shot the ball well and did what we needed to do and in the second half we just didn’t knock down shots.”
Forsline also played a much larger role in the second stanza as the Class AA Giants rallied.
“She’s incredibly skilled and obviously she has a big height advantage,” said Cole. “It’s so hard to stop somebody like that. I thought our girls played well but she’s unstoppable in a sense. We were relying on our defense to slow her down, and we did that for a while, but she also made a lot of tough baskets.”
Junior Amelia Penke led the Wolves with 13 points, nine rebounds and four steals, while fellow junior Lydia Shultz was next on the Ely scoring chart with 12 points to go with five steals, four rebounds and four assists.
Senior Zoe MacKenzie hit a couple of triples and was next with six points and Lillie O’Neill added five points and Ruby Lowe finished with three.
Ely relied on the three-point shot heavily, taking 28 of them and hitting just eight. The Wolves were just fivefor- 16 from two-point range.
Forsline was the only Giant to hit double digits while teammates Reese Heikkila and Sophie Holsclaw wound up with six points each.
The Wolves, who play Chisholm at Target Center this weekend (see related story) are winless but Cole is seeing progress in the early season.
“I think in both of the last two years we had some really hard games to open the season,” she said. “So it gets to be a little defeating. But I do think our girls have played hard and I wasn’t sure what to expect with two graduating and losing another to injury. We are doing some good things and there are some things where we can better, but now we’re going into some games that I think are winnable.”
