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Field scores 2 points off bench in season debut
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
WABASH — The Rochester girls basketball team’s stretch of bad starts to games looked like it might continue when Southwood’s Hali Pershing intercepted a pass headed for the wing and went the other way for a layup Saturday.
That bad start lasted for barely a minute more, as the Lady Zs responded with a 13-0 run to take an 11-point lead after one quarter, and they went on to beat the Lady Knights 38-25 to stay undefeated in Three Rivers Conference play.
Rylee Clevenger scored all 14 of her points in the second half for the Lady Zs, who improved to 8-2 overall and 3-0 in the Three Rivers Conference. Ella McCarter added 10 points and six rebounds, and Aubrey Wilson had five points and seven steals.
Rochester beat Southwood for the second straight year and the ninth time in the last 12 years.
Rochester also celebrated the return of Jadyn Field to the lineup. The sophomore forward missed the first nine games after undergoing ACL surgery on her knee on Aug. 14.
Gracie Lambert and Izzy Ashba had five points each for Southwood (3-4, 0-1). Pershing, Southwood’s top scorer at 12 points per game, was held to four.
Rochester trailed 12-4 after one quarter against Tippecanoe Valley, trailed 9-3 after one quarter against Winamac and trailed 10-5 in the first quarter against Culver in their previous three games. They lost to Valley and beat Winamac and Culver.
But when Brailyn Hunter swished a 3-pointer from the left corner with 6:21 left in the first quarter to give the Lady Zs a 3-2 lead, they never trailed again.
Audrey Bolinger scored on a banker in the post, and McCarter drained a 3. Aubrey Wilson hit a 3 from the right of the key off a Field assist, and Field capped the run with a post layin to make it 13-2.
“I think that (coach Joel) Burrus has really pushed us, especially this game, to get off on a really good start because our last couple games have not been good,” Wilson said.
Field’s return is noteworthy as Rochester rarely used more than six players in a game without her.
“It just gives us something to where we’re going to be able to get some more breaks for people,” Burrus said. “I thought she did fine out there tonight. Like I said, we’re going to have to be careful.”
Southwood never got closer than nine points after that. They committed 19 turnovers, including eight in the first quarter.
“Well, we got down, that’s 11 points, and you lost by 13,” Southwood coach Kenneth Norman said. “So you play the rest of the game as a two-point game, so it was pretty much the game. When I look back, they extended their pressure a little on us, and we made some really silly plays. Just weren’t aggressive enough with beating something we play all the time. We’re pretty close to the same type of team on halfcourt defense. We weren’t aggressive enough in the first quarter, and they did a really good job of taking away what we wanted to do to begin with.”
Adi Deaton scored on a putback for Southwood to start the second quarter, but McCarter hit a 12-foot pullup and then made two free throws to make it 17-4.
Southwood cut it to 17-8 on a Pershing short jumper to start the third quarter, but Bolinger hit two free throws, and Wilson slid inside for a putback.
Southwood would cut it to nine again at 23-14 with 1:19 left in the third on an Ella Chambers free throw, but Clevenger hit a trey from the right corner to push the lead to 12 going into the fourth.
She then hit another 3 from the left wing after a kickout from Bolinger in the post.
And after Southwood got within 29-18 in the fourth, Clevenger hit two more 3s from the right side to extend the lead to 17.
Clevenger was wearing a mouthpiece to protect a cut on the right side of her mouth that she suffered during the Culver game three days earlier. The cut required five stitches to repair.
With the 5-9 Pershing hawking passes to the left wing of Rochester’s offense, Burrus decided to move Clevenger to the right side of the court.
“I thought R.J. (Clevenger), I’m not even worried about the points,” Burrus said. “I just thought she played a gutsy game with the mouthpiece. I thought she did a really good job defensively, and she’s done a really good job defensively for us all year.”
Meanwhile, Wilson was making Southwood’s ballhandlers with her defense. She also sported a wound on her lip that she suffered against Culver.
“Definitely I would say in this game, as a top, you want to split the high post and get out to shooters,” Wilson said. “So when we know there’s a shooter that can hit on the 3-point line, we stunt out to them more instead of being focused on the high post, and if the ball does get into the high post, they usually use it as a release to hit their 3-point shooters so then they can take shots. But we just had to trust our wings to get out to the shooters before we could get out there to them too.”
Rochester 38, Southwood 25
ROCHESTER (38) (8-2, 3-0)
Aubrey Wilson 2 0-0 5, Rylee Clevenger 4 2-2 14, Brailyn Hunter 1 0-0 3, Ella McCarter 3 3-4 10, Audrey Bolinger 1 2-2 4, Jadyn Field 1 0-0 2
TEAM: 12 7-8 38
SOUTHWOOD (25) (3-4, 0-1)
Gracie Lambert 2 0-0 5, Izzy Ashba 2 0-0 5, Hali Pershing 2 0-0 4, Lola Winer 2 0-0 4, Alivia Pershing 0 0-0 0, Ella Chambers 0 1-2 1, Hailey Collins 0 0-0 0, Brooke Farr 0 0-0 0, Adi Deaton 2 0-0 4, Aaliyah Bussard 0 2-2 2
TEAM: 10 3-4 25
Three-point field goals:
Rochester 7 (Clevenger 4, McCarter, Wilson, Hunter),
Southwood 2 (Lambert, Ashba)
Total fouls: Rochester 10, Southwood 14
Turnovers: Rochester 12, Southwood 19
Score by quarters
Rochester 13 4 9 12 – 38
Southwood 2 4 8 11 – 25
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