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Bolinger scores 12, Wilson adds 11 for Lady Zs in loss
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
The Tippecanoe Valley girls basketball team came into their game against Rochester at the RHS gym Tuesday with a 2-4 record.
For first-year Valley coach Rebekah Parker, it was time to make a lineup change.
She added Dalynne Bussard and Hailey Stookey to the starting group, replacing Hadley Wise and Lydia Craig. She also gave more playing time to reserves Maycee Koch and Betty Shepherd and gave freshman Malaynie Costello her first varsity minutes.
Juniors Gaby Gonzalez and Lucy Hayden, however, remained lineup stalwarts, and the unit that combined something old with something new went on to come back from a 28-25 deficit after three quarters to win 40-33.
Gonzalez outscored the entire Rochester team 7-5 in the fourth quarter and finished with nine points. Hayden also had nine.
Bussard had six, including a 12-foot jumper in the fourth quarter after a Rochester defender deflected a pass that landed in her hands.
She also made two of four free throws in the final 14.3 seconds to complete the scoring.
But the game-winning basket came from Stookey, who put back an air ball with 4:27 left to give Valley a 34-32 lead.
Audrey Bolinger scored a career-high 12 points to lead Rochester, and Aubrey Wilson added 11.
The game was tied 32-32 with 4:47 left on a Wilson free throw, but Valley closed on an 8-1 run.
While Valley improved to 3-4 and beat Rochester for the fifth straight meeting, the Lady Zs dropped to 5-2.
Parker said recent happenings in practice led to the lineup changes. She called it a “huge team win.”
“When you’re 2-4, you’ve got to change things up,” Parker said. “And we’ve really tried to develop a competitive culture in practice. And we’ve done that, especially yesterday we did that. We saw some people shine and wanted to reward them, and it wasn’t just Dalynne and Hailey doing better, which they have. I wanted to see just different combinations and what it looks like for other people to come off the bench.”
Gonzalez scored five points in a 41-second span in the fourth quarter to give Valley a 30-28 lead. It started with a 3-point play after making an off-balance runner and drawing a foul. Then she added two free throws.
“I felt that I saw the game was close, so I wanted to try and attack more and wanted to get to the free throw line and make my shots,” Gonzalez said. “Because the outside wasn’t really going too good for us in the first three quarters, so I tried to attack more.”
Hayden’s big contribution in the fourth quarter started with a steal and ended with her muscling home a coast-to-coast layup to make it 32-28.
Brailyn Hunter drilled a 3 for the Lady Zs to make it 32-31 with 5:11 left. Rochester coach Joel Burrus called timeout, but they never had another field goal.
Valley held Rochester’s Ella McCarter to a season-low one point.
“I felt like late there, we got a little timid,” Burrus said. “Ella’s got to come off there, and we got to get her downhill, and she’s got to shoot the ball. And I thought she had a good defensive game, but we’ve got to get her to score. She’s a first-team all-conference player for a reason, but when her and R.J. (Rylee Clevenger) have seven total points, it’s going to be hard for us to win.”
Valley jumped out to a 12-4 lead with the new lineup. That included two buckets in the midrange from Carlee Snyder and a Wise 3-pointer.
Rochester responded with an 11-2 run to open the second quarter. Clevenger hit two treys during the run, and Wilson hit a left baseline jumper from 15 feet and then hit a 3 from the right of the key to give Rochester their first lead at 15-14.
Bussard went coast to coast for a layup that put the Lady Vikings back ahead, but Bolinger split a pair of free throws and then scored with her left hand in the post to give Rochester an 18-16 halftime lead.
The third quarter featured six lead changes, but Bolinger carried Rochester, scoring eight of their 10 points. Her 3-point play with 57.2 seconds left gave Rochester a 26-25 lead, and McCarter found her for a bucket with one second left to give Rochester their biggest lead at 28-25.
That’s when Gonzalez got aggressive, and the Valley defense got stingy. Parker said her team was “disciplined on both ends of the floor.”
“They gave us no choice,” Parker said of playing man-to-man. “They were hurting us in our zone, and we had to go to man to match up with their shooters.”
Rochester did not make a substitution. Sophomore post player Jadyn Field missed her seventh straight game.
“I’m disappointed for them, but I’m not disappointed with them,” Burrus said.
Tippecanoe Valley 40, Rochester 33
VALLEY (40) (3-4)
Gaby Gonzalez 3 3-3 9, Hailey Stookey 2 0-0 5, Dalynne Bussard 2 2-4 6, Carlee Snyder 2 0-0 4, Lucy Hayden 4 1-2 9, Malaynie Costello 1 0-0 2, Hadley Wise 1 0-0 3, Lydia Craig 0 0-0 0, Maycee Koch 1 0-0 2, Betty Shepherd 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 16 6-9 40
ROCHESTER (33) (5-2)
Aubrey Wilson 4 1-2 11, Rylee Clevenger 2 0-0 6, Brailyn Hunter 1 0-0 3, Ella McCarter 0 1-2 1, Audrey Bolinger 4 4-7 12
TEAM: 11 6-11 33
Three-point field goals:
Valley 2 (Stookey, Wise),
Rochester 5 (Clevenger 2, Wilson 2, Hunter)
Total fouls: Valley 15, Rochester 13
Turnovers: Valley 13, Rochester 13
Score by quarters
Valley 12 4 9 15 – 40
Rochester 4 14 10 5 – 33
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