As Oakville Senior High School’s Nicole Norberg sat on the bench in foul trouble Friday night, the Tigers girls’ basketball team watched a 26-20 halftime lead fade away to a disappointing 40-39 loss on the road to Kirkwood.

Despite the loss for the Tigers (5-5, 0-2), Oakville head coach Ron Thompson was impressed with how his players pulled together as their leading scoring threat was removed for most of the game due to foul problems.

“Overall, I was pleased,” Thompson said. “I thought that some of our girls really stepped up with Norberg in foul trouble.”

Oakville’s Nakeva Glenn scored 12 points and six re-bounds. The sophomore guard also recorded one steal.

“If it wasn’t her best game, then it was probably her second best game of the year,” Thompson said. “She’s not really played much organized basketball, so she’s still trying to understand what she can and can’t do. But the fact is that she can do a lot of things out there when her confidence is up”

Norberg, who’s averaging 16 points per game this season, was held to three points and four rebounds. The senior forward did not foul out of the game, but was hampered for most of the evening with four fouls.

“She (Norberg) had her second foul with one minute left in the first quarter,” Thompson said. “We then didn’t start well in the third quarter and had a couple of turnovers, which hurt us.”

Despite the loss, Thompson believes his team is making progress and should be ready for a tough home game against Fox at 7 p.m. Friday. Fox (4-7, 1-2 Suburban West) is coming off a 66-35 loss at home to Parkway South.

“They have a pretty good big girl in Rachel Heilmann, so we’ll have to match her up with Norberg,” Thompson said. “They like to play half court, whereas we like to run a full-court game. So the game will probably be decided by who controls the tempo of the game.”