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Wilson leads Rochester with 10
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Reese Stonebraker hit four 3-pointers and scored a game-high 18 points, and the Whitko girls basketball team rallied from a 10-point first-half deficit to beat host Rochester 49-35 at the RHS gym Saturday.
Anna Allebach came off the bench to score eight for the Lady Wildcats, who improved to 11-3 overall and 5-0 in the Three Rivers Conference. Hazel Leffers had seven, all in the fourth quarter.
Aubrey Wilson led Rochester with 10 points, but the Lady Zs suffered their second straight loss and their second conference loss. Rochester is now 12-5, 4-2.
Had Rochester won, they would have been in a three-way tie for first in the TRC. Now they are two games back with three to play.
“We put a lot into this game,” Rochester coach Joel Burrus said. “They’ve been beating the brakes off people in the TRC – I mean, beating the brakes off people. … I thought we got some good looks, but you’ve got to hit some shots against them if you’re going to beat them.”
The third quarter featured four lead changes, and Rochester took their final lead at 29-28 with 1:00 left in the third quarter when Jadyn Field got inside position on Whitko’s 6-2 post player Ally Brown and got inside from the right block for a layup.
But Brown quickly answered with a layup at the other end, and the Lady Wildcats were ahead for good.
Wilson missed two free throws with 9.6 seconds left in the third quarter, and the Lady Zs never came so close to leading.
Leffers scored on a putback 21 seconds into the fourth quarter and was fouled. She missed the ensuing free throw, but she hit two from the line with 5:54 left to make it a five-point lead. Stonebraker’s 3-pointer from the right wing made it 37-29.
A Brailyn Hunter steal led to a Rylee Clevenger 3-pointer in transition that snapped a 5:47 scoreless drought and cut the lead down to five. But Whitko leading scorer Adriyanna Phillips, who had not scored since the first quarter, then buried a 3-pointer from the left corner off a drive-and-kick, and the lead was back up to eight.
A Leffers layup off an Allebach assist and a Stonebraker left baseline runner made it 44-32.
Rochester committed nine turnovers in the fourth quarter and 18 for the game. By contrast, Whitko had 10 turnovers – eight in the first half but just two in the second half.
“Our goal – and you’re going to probably think I’m nuts – was to hold them under 40,” Burrus said. “Our goal was to be the first team to hold them under 40 this year. Well, you think about offensive rebounds and turnovers, and we had to chase at the end of the game, and we held them to 49. … In a perfect world, 45-39 if we were going to win. That was my blueprint.”
Rochester scored the first 10 points of the game. Wilson hit a driving banker, Hunter hit a corner 3, Audrey Bolinger scored in the post off the glass, Hunter hit two free throws, and McCarter hit a free throw.
They also held leads of 12-2, 17-7, 19-9 and 21-11.
They held sisters Reese and Jayma Stonebraker, who combine for 27 points per game and who combined for 36 points in their previous game against Wabash, to no field goals in the first quarter.
A Reese Stonebraker 3-pointer and a Jayma Stonebraker layup helped Whitko cut the margin to 22-16 at halftime.
“Our goal today was do we hold the big three (Phillips, Reese Stonebraker, Jayma Stonebraker) under 10,” Burrus said. “If we hold each of them under 10, but our turnovers have to be under 10. Those were our main stats, and then they had 12 or 13 offensive rebounds.”
Whitko 49, Rochester 35
WHITKO (49) (11-3, 5-0)
Hazel Leffers 2 3-5 7, Jayma Stonebraker 2 0-1 4, Reese Stonebraker 7 0-0 18, Adriyanna Phillips 2 0-0 6, Ally Brown 3 0-2 6, Anna Allebach 1 6-12 8
TEAM: 17 9-20 49
ROCHESTER (35) (12-5, 4-2)
Aubrey Wilson 4 1-3 10, Rylee Clevenger 3 0-0 8, Brailyn Hunter 1 2-2 5, Ella McCarter 1 1-2 3, Audrey Bolinger 1 0-0 2, Jadyn Field 3 1-2 7
TEAM: 13 5-9 35
Three-point field goals:
Whitko 6 (R. Stonebraker 4, Phillips 2),
Rochester 4 (Clevenger 2, Wilson, Hunter)
Total fouls: Whitko 12, Rochester 15
Turnovers: Whitko 10, Rochester 18
Score by quarters
Whitko 5 11 14 19 – 49
Rochester 14 8 7 6 – 35
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