BUTTE, Mont. – A tough weekend continued for (18) Lady Argo basketball, losing 75-68 to Montana Tech. The loss was the second straight for UGF in the first two games of Frontier Conference play after the team went 9-0 to start the season.
 
The two losses come directly after the Lady Argos traveled all the way to Tennessee to play in the biggest nonconference tournament in the nation. UGF won two games against two ranked teams, but may have fallen into a bit of a layoff after returning to Montana.
 
"I was worried about this weekend. We had a little bit of a letdown after Jackson, Tenn., I thought," UGF Head Coach Bill Himmelberg said. "I didn't think we had a very good week of practice and the result was two losses."
 
UGF's lack of focus was evident in the first quarter. The Lady Argos turned it over 9 times in the first ten minutes and let the Orediggers shoot over 50 percent from the floor, leading to a 9-point deficit.
 
Senior Nneka Nnadi, the Lady Argos second leading scorer, picked two fouls in the first two minutes of the quarter, and sat on the bench for the next twelve minutes.
 
Things tightened up in the second quarter on both ends for UGF. Cutting both turnovers and Tech's shooting percentage in half, helped halve the Oredigger's lead. The Lady Argos held Tech to just 10 points in the second quarter and went into the half down by just 4.
 
With Nnadi back on the floor and out of foul trouble, the Lady Argos had their best offensive quarter of the game in the third. Nnadi scored 7 points in those 10 minutes, and senior center Whitney George scored 6. A bucket from senior guard Darah Huertas-Vining with 1:06 left in the quarter gave UGF its first lead of the night at 54-53, but it was quickly taken back by Tech's Monica Landdeck who had a monster game.
 
Landdeck led all scorers with 29 points, a result of UGF's strategy of taking away her teammates Hattie Thatcher and Martha Dembek. The strategy worked on those two players, who combined for 17 points and shot just 5-15 from the field.
 
Landdeck only scored four of those 29 points in the fourth quarter, but they came in big moments, once again taking the lead back from UGF at the 5:42 mark and then scoring again to put Tech up by three.
 
That lead would prove too much to overcome as Tech got a few big offensive rebounds and hit just enough free throws to hang on to the lead down the stretch.
 
Five of Nneka Nnadi's team leading 16 points came in the fourth quarter, which accounted for over a third of the team's points in the final ten minutes. Her and George's efforts were two of the major factors in the Lady Argos taking their fleeting lead in the middle of the second half.
 
George finished the game with 13 points, a season high, along with 7 rebounds and 2 blocks.
 
"She's just being more and more aggressive going to the basket, and we're putting the ball into the post a lot better than we have been," Himmelberg said. "I'm particularly pleased with how well Whitney did going to the basket."
 
Thanks in large part to George and Nnadi, UGF outscored Tech 48-36 inside the paint. Also contributing to that was junior Kallee Wilson, who scored 11 points off the bench.
 
The loss drops the Lady Argos to 9-2 (0-2), but the team will gladly return to nonconference play until the turn of the new year. Next for UGF will be a road exhibition game against Montana State University – Billings on December 10 at 5 p.m.