By Travis Rosenau

trosenau@nujournal.com

SLEEPY EYE — Despite a competitive first half of basketball on Day 2 of the Sleepy Eye St. Mary’s Tip-Off Invitational, turnovers piled up on the Sleepy Eye Indians Saturday afternoon as the Waterville-Elysian-Morristown Buccaneers ran away with a 75-47 win.

The Indians, who fell to BOLD 63-40 on Day 1 of the St. Mary’s Invite Friday, fell to 0-2 to start the season. WEM improved to 1-1.

Sleepy Eye, under first-year head coach Grant Romberg, had moments in the first half against WEM where it controlled the game and even cut an 11-point deficit down to 2 right before the half. But losing two of the school’s top two career scorers in Kadence Hesse and Brea Mertz to graduation in 2024 was bound to make things challenging this season for Romberg.

“The biggest thing is going to be to getting accustomed to step into that role,” Romberg said. “We’re asking a lot more of those key players from last year that came back. And right now I think they’ve got a lot of weight on their shoulders and they’ve got to trust the other girls that are contributors now, too. We’re going to play a deeper rotation this year out of necessity, I mean most nights we’re going to play eight or nine girls a fair amount of minutes.

“And we’re running a little bit of a new offensive system. Obviously it’s big shoes to fill with Kadence and Brea gone and I think it’s just going to take a few games for these girls to get acclimated and start to get that confidence to step in and do that. I’ve been honestly happy with the progress so far, obviously we wish we would’ve had a better start to this weekend, but we’re making baby steps and we’ll keep on improving.”

Paige Haala led Sleepy Eye with 10 points and three rebounds, while Kayla Hecht added 9 points and three rebounds. Sam Price had 7 points and four rebounds, while Cadence Okerman had 5 points, four rebounds, two assists and two steals and Jace Schauman had four rebounds and two assists.

WEM was led by Addison Condon’s 29 points, while Kaitlyn LaFrance had 11 points.

A complete story with photo will be available online and in Tuesday’s edition of The Journal.