Kingsford’s Alyvia Kowalski (13) lowers her shoulder and drives to the basket against Houghton’s Lexi Burns (13) on Friday in Flivver Gym. (Terry Raiche photo)

KINGSFORD — For the first three quarters of the game Friday night between Houghton and Kingsford, the Flivvers were the better team.

Coming out in an aggressive 1-3-1 half court zone trap, Kingsford pestered the Gremlins into 20 turnovers through the first 24 minutes.

But with the aid of adjustments from veteran coach Julie Filpus, Houghton finally solved Kingsford’s defensive setup and outscored the tiring Flivvers 18-5 in the final frame to post a 51-43 non-conference victory at Flivver Gym.

Filpus praised the Kingsford defense afterwards.

“I just thought they worked very hard in their zone,” she said. “They were in the passing lanes and made you think you could make the pass, but it wasn’t not really there. And they covered the floor.

“We got into maybe a little bit of misdirection with pass fakes, which helped us a bit, but we had way too many turnovers against it.”

After Houghton sophomore Ellie Hainault sank a layup just five seconds into the game, the Flivvers responded with a 10-0 burst to assume early control.

Cassie Olson started the run for Kingsford (5-6) with a lay-in off an offensive rebound and senior Kailey Sundquist finished off an and-one to put the Flivvers on top.

Anna Bortolini, who returned to action after missing three games with a slight fracture in her wrist, knocked down two free throws before Aubrie Moore buried a 3-pointer off an assist from Bortolini to lift the Flivvers to a 10-2 advantage.

“Offensively in the first and second quarters, I thought we were really good,” said JV coach Riley Poupore, who was substituting for head coach Ginger Moore.

“I thought Kailey played phenomenal for us tonight and having Anna, it’s just phenomenal what she can do on offense and defense because she really brings that speed.”

Bortolini played the chaser at the top of the 1-3-1 defense, running from side to side trapping the ball with the wings. With their quick movement and active hands, the Flivvers hampered the Gremlin offensive attack in the first half, which ended with Kingsford up 24-18.

“We just put in this defense a couple of days ago …,” said Poupore, who praised the assistance of Coach Moore, who missed the game due to illness. “And I was impressed. I felt like this was the defense we needed to win, and I felt confident doing that until the end.”

At the break, Filpus made her adjustments against that defense, which involved moving her posts into the high and mid-post and kicking the ball to the corners and baseline areas.

“We basically made a rule at halftime that we weren’t allowed to dribble in the high post because they were collapsing so hard,” she explained. “We felt that in some of our offense, just getting the ball to the corner was big.

“What I thought was a big key was … getting the ball to the middle of the lane and then the corner. And we just did a great job of hitting the shots.”

Especially junior Lexi Burns, who finished the game with four of her team’s six 3-pointers.

The Flivvers stayed on top in the third quarter with a 3-pointer each from Moore and Kowalski, two driving hoops by Bortolini and two interior buckets from Sundquist.

But Kingsford was unable to sustain its offensive execution in the fourth, going the first 5½ minutes without scoring. Meanwhile, Houghton rang up 13 points, led by six points from sophomore Ruby Zawada and a triple by Burns.

The Gremlins were able to push the ball in transition as the Flivvers’ shooting accuracy fell.

By the time Bortolini ended the dry stretch with a steal and layup with 2:30 to play, Kingsford was down by six.

Houghton then hit 5 of 6 free throws down the stretch to preserve its comeback victory.

“I can’t say enough about the effort that we put out to dig out of a (17-6) deficit,” Filpus said. “It was just toughness and resilience against a nice Kingsford team.”

On the other side, Poupore wanted the Flivver players to keep in mind how well they had played against the 10-3 Gremlins.

“After the game, I told the girls, ‘This one is going to sting, but we shouldn’t be hanging our heads because if we continue to play at this level with this intensity, we have a really bright future coming up.'”

Burns led all scorers with 17 points, while Zawada finished with 12.

Kowalski topped Kingsford with 11 points to go with 10 from Aubrie Moore, nine from Sundquist and eight from Bortolini.

The Flivvers return to action Tuesday night when they travel to Norway to face the Knights (4-6).