Pella starts its second turn through the Little Hawkeye Conference tonight with a trip to Grinnell. The Lady Dutch and Little Dutch swept the Tigers at home in early December.

In the girls’ game, it’s a showdown of two highly ranked teams – number one Pella and number four Grinnell.

Lady Dutch Coach Jerod Garland says that his team has had some tough battles at Grinnell the last couple of years.

“We’ve actually had to come from behind a couple of times when we’ve played there. They’re very talented, very athletic, and they get up and down. When we played them at our place our defense was really sound that night and they didn’t shoot well. Hopefully we can get that same effort (tonight).”

The first time the two boys’ teams squared off, Pella had to hang on for dear life to win 96-94.

While they haven’t come close to giving up 94 points since, the Little Dutch have struggled a bit defensively, and assistant coach Roger DeWaard says that they continue to look for the right formula.

“If you’ve watched Pella over the years, we’re about pressure man defense. But at the same time, we’re not going to stick our head in the sand and say we’re going to pressure man if that’s not what’s best for this team. We want to put our guys in the best position to be successful. If that means we play zone, we’ll play zone. We’re not going to die on our principles just because we want to do that. I think you’ll see us continue to mix it up.”

Opening tip of the doubleheader is tonight at 6:15 at Grinnell. Trevor Castle, Brian Vande Lune and Mike Buchheit will call the action live on the KRLS 2 stream of our website and mobile app, beginning with pregame at 6:00.