It was a pair of highly ranked teams coming out on top last night in a doubleheader heard live on 92.1 KRLS, as the #4 Grinnell girls beat 14th-ranked Pella 62-39, while the #5 Little Dutch boys knocked off the Tigers 56-44.

In the girls game, Pella kept it close until just before intermission, when Grinnell used a mini-run to open up a nine-point advantage that ballooned to double figures in the third quarter, and the Lady Dutch could never recover.

Elly Cairney scored 13 points and Emily Holterhaus added 11 points and 20 boards, grabbing her 800th career rebound in the process. Pella falls to 14-6 overall and 9-4 in the Little Hawkeye Conference.

The Little Dutch bolted to an 11-0 lead, and never led by less than 10 until there were less than three minutes left in the game. Grinnell got it all the way down to seven with the ball, but Logan Shetterly drained a three after a Tiger miss, and Nick DeJong’s steal started a Josh Warner and-one to put the game away.

While it was a hot start and satisfying finish, the middle 24 minutes were not Pella’s best, and it’s something coach Derek Schulte says they need to learn from with the postseason looming.

“Number one, we’ve got to clean up multiple areas, but two, there are going to be games that look like this in the tournament. It’s not necessarily about getting a pretty win, sometimes it’s about getting a gritty win, and tonight is one of those nights when we had that.”

Shetterly was Pella’s lone double-digit scorer with 16 points, and John Oltman chipped in nine. The Little Dutch are now 15-4 on the year and 10-3 in the LHC.

Up next for both clubs is a re-scheduled trip to Indianola on Monday for a doubleheader that starts at 6:15.