Opening their season with a sweep of Capital City before Thanksgiving, Ryan Flanagan’s Owensville Dutchgirls hoped for the same Monday night at home in their Four Rivers Conference (FRC) opener against St. Clair’s Lady Bulldogs.

Trailing 9-7 midway through the first quarter, Owensville saw St. Clair outscore them 39-10 the rest of the half before suffering a 67-44 loss to the Lady Bulldogs opening FRC action for both teams.

“That’s a tough St. Clair team we just went up against,” Flanagan said. “We have to do better at taking care of the basketball. I give credit to St. Clair for turning our mistakes into points.”

Down 3-0 in the opening seconds, OHS’ first points of the month of December came via a Keira Hendrix bucket at the 7:15 mark of the first quarter.

A minute later, Anna Finley scored cutting the St. Clair lead back down to one at 5-4 with 6:11 for the opening period.

Only able to get free throws from Kyla Hendrix, Finley and Leah Reed the rest of the quarter, Owensville found themselves trailing a solid Lady Bulldog squad 26-8 after eight minutes of basketball.

Assessed a technical foul for an illegal substitution to start the second quarter, St. Clair saw Finley make both free throws cutting their lead to 26-10.

From there, the Lady Bulldogs scored the next 13 points before a Finley basket stopped the run making the score 39-12 in St. Clair’s favor with 3:23 until halftime.

A Kyla Hendrix 3-pointer and a Keira Hendrix basket led to Owensville trailing the Lady Bulldogs 48-17 at halftime.

Finley paced the Dutchgirl with seven first-half points.

St. Clair’s Alohilani Bursey recorded a double double in the first half with 12 points and 11 rebounds in addition to five steals and two blocked shots.

“We had a very tough time guarding 23 (Bursey),” Flanagan said. “To her credit, she’s a terrific player and will cause nightmares for opposing teams throughout the season.”

Outscoring St. Clair 27-19 in the second half, OHS came up on the short end of a 67-44 final score.

Thanks to a pair of fourth-quarter 3-pointers, Finley led the Dutchgirls with 13 points followed closely with eight points from Kyla Hendrix.

Keira Hendrix added seven markers in addition to five each from Leah Reed and Kate Angell.

Landry Watson, Katelyn Landolt and Anna Skornia each added two points rounding out the OHS scoring. Watson also had four steals.

Along with her seven points, Keira Hendrix added nine rebounds and three steals.

Alana Hinson led St. Clair with 22 points followed by Bursey with 14 points and 17 rebounds.