Alaynah Quinn had one thing on her mind when she was watching her Fraser basketball teammates from the bench for the last five minutes of the first half of the Ramblers’ season opener with Dakota.

“I just wanted to go in real bad and make a difference,” said Quinn, who scored eight of her 17 points in the third quarter when Fraser outscored the Cougars 20-9 on the way to a 51-41 victory Thursday in the Macomb Area Conference crossover game.

Quinn picked up her third foul with 5:19 left in the first half while guarding Dakota’s Brooklyn Garavaglia. At halftime Ramblers coach Rob Fulgenzi made some adjustments on defense and Quinn stayed foul-free for the rest of the game.

“My teammates took over for me and guarded my girl,” Quinn said. “I could take a step back and focus on offense.”

Quinn connected on two 3-point baskets in the third quarter, including the one that put the Ramblers ahead to stay against the defending MAC Red champions.

“We didn’t have an answer for her,” said Cougars coach Olivia Savage. “We put MaKayla (Reed) on her and she did a good job but she just didn’t have any help.”

Dakota led 21-20 at halftime but Fulgenzi wasn’t concerned.

“Having (Quinn) in foul trouble late in the first half didn’t help but I thought the group that was out there kept it together,” he said. “We felt pretty good with where we were, only a point down. A lot of things we did in the first half were self-inflicted wounds.

“In the second half we wanted to get Alaynah going. We wanted to get her downhill. We kind of spread it out and let her do her thing at the top of the key. We worked some pick and rolls and she was able to get some shots off a screen. With her getting downhill we were able to get other players involved.”

Brynn Norbeck, the other half of Fraser’s veteran 1-2 punch, also finished with 17 points.

“They’re both versatile in their games,” Fulgenzi said. “They can both handle the ball. They can finish, they can shoot and hit free throws They’re good on the boards and can make big plays on both ends of the court.

“They’ve both been all-county and all-conference players. They were always leaders on the court. Now they’re captains and leaders for the rest of the team on the court and off the court.”

Despite all their accomplishments, Quinn and Norbeck are only juniors.

Dakota’s biggest problem in the game was its free-throw shooting. The Cougars made only 15 of 36 attempts from the line.

“The game simply came down to free throws,” Savage said. “If we’d made our free throws it would have been completely different. We missed a lot of outside shots, too. We had fouls on our side but we settled for 3s instead of attacking the basket.

“It’s fixable, for sure. It’s a great learning experience. It gave us as coaches things we have to work on. We’ve been throwing a lot of new things at them and today we just kind of forgot about all of them. It’s still early in the season. I have one returning starter and they’re still learning to play together and find a rhythm. We have a game next week (against L’Anse Creuse North) and we talked about how we’ll respond.”

Meadow Cameron led Dakota with 20 points and Garavaglia finished with 14. The Cougars are 1-1.

Dakota was the beginning of a rugged non-conference start for Fraser, which finished a game behind MAC Gold champion Marine City last year.

“We wanted to start the season with some tough opponents,” Fulgenzi said. “I loved our fight and resiliency. We took some punches early but hung in there. I’m very proud of this group. We have a lot to clean up but I like the outlook for this team, not only for this year but in the future. We’re very young. We have only one senior.”