Heading into the new season, Litchfield girls basketball coach Ian Anderson knew the Dragons would need to develop more scoring.
The second-year coach was pretty confident the points were in the roster, they just needed an opportunity to appear.
Last week was that opportunity for Lily Osterbrerg. The 5-foot-7 guard recorded back-to-back 20-point games as the Dragons split a pair of contests, beating Redwood Valley 62-45 on Jan. 26, and falling to Glencoe-Silver Lake 59-50 on Thursday.
“That’s actually something Lily talked about in preseason goals,” Anderson said of Osterberg’s scoring surge. “One of her goals was to average double figures. We challenged her, we wanted to see her do more than that – 15 or more.”
Osterberg, a senior, averaged 7.4 points per game last season and scored 11 points in the Dragons’ season-opener against Dassel-Cokato. But she found a whole new level last week, scoring 23 points against Redwood Valley, and 25 at Glencoe-Silver Lake two days later. Included in the Redwood Valley total were seven three-pointers, which was two short of the team record but a demonstration of the kind of outside shooting that could open things up on the inside for some of Osterberg’s teammates.
Anderson also likes the matchup dilemmas other teams could face with an offensive-minded Osterberg on the floor.
“Teams have been focusing on Syd (McCann) and they will continue to,” Anderson said. “The more Lily can do this, and the more our sophomores can step up … the more threats we can play with when they focus on Syd, the tougher we’re going to be.”
Anderson also said he was impressed with the Dragons’ performance against Redwood Valley, which was the first live game action they had seen in 10 games after having a game the previous week postponed due to a COVID-19 situation on the opposing team.
Litchfield entered the game planning to stop Redwood Valley’s all-state post Haley Garman, and the strategy worked as the Dragons built a five-point halftime lead and pulled away in the second half. They held the 6-1 Garman to 13 points in the game.
“I was pretty impressed with how the girls came out,” Anderson said. “Defensively, we played awesome.”
Though it ended in a loss, Anderson said he also was mostly pleased with the Dragons’ play against Glencoe-Silver Lake. The closely contested game was tied 50-50 with about three minutes to play before G-SL closed out the win with the final nine points.
“We went cold and they hit a couple of shots, and that was the end of the story,” Anderson said. “We talked about that after the game. It was our first away game and our first really tight game, down to the wire. So it was a good experience. It shows us things we need to tweak and adjust for next time.”
