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Lady Comets go 0 for 14 from 3-point range
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Makenna Strycker Kynzie Hathaway Natalie Warner
FRANCESVILLE — Mimicking the weather outside, the Pioneer girls basketball team got a lightning fast start from senior point guard Makenna Strycker and utilized its 2-3 zone to put Caston’s offense on ice on their way to a 34-13 win in a Class 1A, Sectional 50 quarterfinal at West Central Wednesday.
Strycker started the game with a personal 8-0 run as Pioneer led wire to wire. She finished with a game-high 20. Kynzie Hathaway added six points, all in the second half, and added seven rebounds.
Sophomore post Natalie Warner led Caston with five points. Madi Douglass, Caston’s leading scorer on the season, was held to four. She scored 18 in Caston’s regular season 40-32 loss to Pioneer Dec. 17.
Douglass scored on a nifty cut to the basket off an Olivia Thomas assist with 2:17 left in the first half. At that point, Caston trailed 17-8. Caston would go nearly two full quarters before they recorded another field goal.
Pioneer snapped a five-game losing streak and improved to 11-12. They will face North White, a 51-27 winner over South Newton in Wednesday’s other quarterfinal, at 7:30 p.m. Friday in the semifinals.
Caston finished 7-16.
Douglass was a returning starter from Caston’s 2024 regional champions, but the other four starters had never started a postseason game before. Thomas was the team’s lone senior.
“Tonight kind of shocked me a little bit because I thought we’ve been practicing really well,” Caston coach Josh Douglass said. “I thought the last two days we practiced really well. I think just being a sectional game for a lot of those kids first time, their eyes were big. And when they were warming up, I could tell. I was like, man, how do I snap them out of it? I just can’t until they get out there and play and learn it.”
Already leading by nine, Pioneer started the second half on a 17-1 run. Strycker hit a pullup 17-footer, and Hathaway retrieved a Strycker deflected pass near the baseline and contorted her body to bank in a layup. On the next possession, with Caston now playing a triangle-in-two defense giving special attention to Strycker and Mia McKaig, Strycker found Hannah Zeigler in the high post, who then found an open Hathaway for a layup.
And after another Caston miss, McKaig rebounded and advanced it to the frontcourt. She passed to Strycker, who was crowded and passed to Julia McGrew, who buried an open 3 to make it 26-8.
Coach Douglass called timeout with 4:48 left in the quarter, his arms folded on his bench while Pioneer coach David McWherter celebrated with a double fist pump on the opposing bench.
“Hey, we get to move on,” McWherter said. “And that’s what I told the girls. I told them at halftime I don’t care if we win 24-20, 24-23, whatever it is. We’ve just to make sure that we move on to Friday night because that’s our main focus this week.”
Three more driving layups for Strycker and a Hathaway putback of her own miss would eventually get the lead to 34-9.
But the story was as much about Pioneer’s defense as its offense.
Strycker and McGrew played the top of the 2-3 zone with McKaig guarding the wings near the corners and Zeigler and reserve Michelle Harding covering the back middle.
Caston could not get points off dribble penetration, and they also missed all 14 of its 3-point tries.
“I knew it would be a dogfight,” McWherter said. “I knew it would be ugly on the offensive ends of the court for both teams. At least I would expect that because I would expect neither team to roll over and so forth. But we just absolutely stepped up defensively. The girls did everything I asked them to early in the game of taking away their dribble penetration and so forth.”
Caston started in a 2-3 zone, but Strycker scored first on a runner in the lane two minutes in. Then she hit a 3-pointer from the right corner over Douglass. Then Douglass fouled her while attempting a 3, and she hit three free throws to make it 8-0.
Douglass called a 30-second timeout, and Caston would slowly pick away at the margin. Madi Douglass got in the open floor and scored on a layup to cut the lead to 11-6, and over a seven-and-a-half minute stretch, Pioneer’s only points were a 23-foot 3-pointer from McKaig.
But then Strycker hit a runner in the lane and found McKaig for a short left baseline jumper on the break after a Madi Douglass miss.
A driving Strycker layup gave Pioneer their first double-digit lead at 17-6.
“Makenna had a whale of a game,” coach Douglass said. “Hats off to her. That’s what your seniors are supposed to do, and she did it. She put them on her back and handled the pressure well and has really stepped up and grown over the years.”
North White 51, South Newton 27
Autumn Reif scored 13 points, and Morgan Carter came off the bench to score 10 as the North White girls basketball team eliminated winless South Newton 51-27 in the first quarterfinal at West Central Wednesday.
North White trailed 4-2 in the first quarter but went on a 30-0 run covering the first and second quarters.
North White (9-14) led 38-8 at halftime and led by as many as 34 points in the second half.
Avalin Bohlinger scored nine points for South Newton, who finished 0-18.
But the Lady Rebels committed 32 turnovers against North White, who stopped pressing at halftime.
Pioneer 34, Caston 13
PIONEER (34) (11-12)
Makenna Strycker 8 3-3 20, Mia McKaig 2 0-0 5, Julia McGrew 1 0-0 3, Kynzie Hathaway 3 0-0 6, Hannah Zeigler 0 0-0 0, Avery Haselby 0 0-0 0, Mya Ott 0 0-0 0, Madyson Shaffer 0 0-0 0, Michelle Harding 0 0-0 0, Leah Zeigler 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 14 3-3 34
CASTON (13) (7-16)
Camila Hernandez-Rios 0 0-0 0, Grace Colvin 0 0-0 0, Madi Douglass 2 0-0 4, Olivia Thomas 1 0-0 2, Natalie Warner 2 1-2 5, Hadlie Coffing 0 0-0 0, Kylee Logan 0 0-0 0, Myli Rude 0 0-0 0, Adyson Steininger 0 0-0 0, Gigi Berry 1 0-0 2, Allison Craig 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 6 1-2 13
Three-point field goals:
Pioneer 3 (Strycker, McKaig, McGrew),
Caston 0
Total fouls: Pioneer 2, Caston 6
Turnovers: Pioneer 8, Caston 10
Score by quarters
Pioneer 11 6 11 6 – 34
Caston 4 4 1 4 – 13
North White 51, South Newton 27
NORTH WHITE (51) (9-14)
Abigail Tribbett 3 1-2 7, Ella Hunt 1 1-2 4, Sable George 2 0-0 6, Kaylyn Applegate 0 1-2 1, Autumn Reif 4 5-5 13, Morgan Carter 4 0-0 10, Madyson Westerhouse 1 0-0 2, Katelyn Westerhouse 1 4-5 6, Adriann Conn 1 0-0 2, Arianna Valdizon 0 0-0 0, Brooklyn Woodcock 0 0-0 0, Melanie Crawford 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 17 12-16 51
SOUTH NEWTON (27) (0-18)
Faye Springsteen 2 0-0 5, Alyssa Standish 0 2-8 2, Livia Kollman 3 0-0 6, Avalin Bohlinger 4 0-0 9, Madison Bohlinger 1 0-0 2, Kelly Cruz 0 0-0 0, Sophia Arrenholz 1 1-2 3, Faye Martinez 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 11 3-10 27
Three-point field goals:
North White 5 (Carter 2, George 2, Hunt),
South Newton 2 (A. Bohlinger, Springsteen)
Total fouls: North White 9, South Newton 18
Turnovers: North White 21, South Newton 32
Score by quarters
North White 14 24 8 5 – 51
South Newton 4 4 9 10 – 27
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