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Bolinger leads Lady Zs with 7 points, 6 rebounds
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
PLYMOUTH — Sophie Miller scored 13 points, and Chloe Horton hit four 3-pointers in the first half for 12 as the Plymouth girls basketball team beat visiting Rochester 35-25 Wednesday.
Audrey Bolinger scored seven points and pulled down six rebounds for the Lady Zs. Ella McCarter hit a pair of 3-pointers as part of an 8-0 Rochester run in the fourth quarter and scored six. Rylee Clevenger and Brailyn Hunter had five each.
But the Lady Zs also committed 20 turnovers against Plymouth’s tight man-to-man defense. They also had only three free throw attempts.
“The way they play, they are very strategic in what they do and how they do things,” Rochester coach Joel Burrus said of Plymouth. “They have to play that way because of the conference that they’re in. … They made us chase them there quite a bit in the second half. I thought we did a good job of getting back in it. We had a couple miscues there late, but I was proud of the girls the way they stuck with it. We could have hung our head when we were sitting there with 17 points with five minutes to go. We kind of dug in there.”
Rochester went over eight minutes without scoring in the second half as Plymouth extended their lead to 29-17.
McCarter broke the drought with a 3-pointer from the left wing with 4:07 left, and she hit another from the left corner at the 2:54 mark to cut the lead to six.
Bolinger cut to the hoop for a finish off glass to make it 29-25 with 1:45 left.
But Plymouth broke the Rochester press, and Lena Jones found Miller for a layup on the first possession after a Plymouth timeout, and Jones, Lydia Wray and Mady Sullivan combined to make four of six free throws over the final 54.2 seconds to sew up the win.
“A big piece of it was we also held them to only two offensive rebounds,” Plymouth coach Micaela Schalliol said. “They have a girl on their team (Jadyn Field) that averages six offensive rebounds, so we were limiting them to one-shot opportunities, and we can be really successful when that happens.”
Rochester’s only lead was at 3-2 in the first quarter after a Clevenger triple, but Horton, a freshman sharpshooter with a quick release, hit two treys to give Plymouth an 8-3 lead.
A Brailyn Hunter 3 got Rochester within 11-8 after one quarter, and an Aubrey Wilson drive and dish to Hunter for a layup and driving layup of Wilson’s own kept Rochester within 15-12 halfway through the second.
But Horton hit two more 3s – one after an offensive rebound – in the final four minutes of the second half as Plymouth built their halftime lead to 21-14.
“I have multiple films of them, and she has hardly shot the ball,” Burrus said of Horton, adding that she was mentioned on the scouting report. “
Miller and Horton combined for 19 first-half points, and Mady Sullivan set up Miller for another layup on the first possession of the second half for a bucket.
Plymouth nearly went eight minutes before their next field goal, but Rochester could only make up one point on the lead on a nifty up-and-under post move from Bolinger for a 3-point play to make it 23-17.
But two Miller free throws and Lena Jones’ 3-pointer on the first possession of the fourth quarter got the lead to double digits.
Meanwhile, Rochester struggled to score against Plymouth’s switch-on-everything man defense.
“That kind of defense is really tough for us, and they switched everything. We’re going to have to really have to look at the tape. I thought we took one too many dribbles multiple times and let the help close to us to where then we couldn’t make the pass, almost like they were able to trap us even though that’s not what they were doing. We just got too deep with it before we made the pass.”
Plymouth 35, Rochester 25
ROCHESTER (25) (12-4)
Aubrey Wilson 1 0-0 2, Rylee Clevenger 2 0-0 5, Brailyn Hunter 2 0-0 5, Ella McCarter 2 0-0 6, Audrey Bolinger 3 1-1 7, Jadyn Field 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 10 1-3 25
PLYMOUTH (35) (9-6)
Tynley Gantz 0 1-2 1, Mady Sullivan 0 1-2 1, Lena Jones 1 1-2 4, Chloe Horton 4 0-0 12, Sophie Miller 5 3-3 13, Lydia Wray 1 2-2 4, Lilly Runyan 0 0-0 0, Olivia Warner 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 11 8-11 35
Three-point field goals:
Rochester 4 (McCarter 2, Hunter, Clevenger),
Plymouth 5 (Horton 4, Jones)
Total fouls: Rochester 11, Plymouth 9
Turnovers: Rochester 20, Plymouth 18
Score by quarters
Rochester 8 6 3 8 – 25
Plymouth 11 10 4 10 – 35
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