.png)
- Val T.
- Jan 15
- 4 min read
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
Brailyn Hunter hit five 3-pointers and scored 19 points, and Jadyn Field added nine, all in the first half, as the Rochester girls basketball team routed host Logansport 53-22 at the Berry Bowl Wednesday.
Adalyn Gonzalez and Aubrey Wilson added seven each for the Lady Zs, who snapped a two-game losing streak and improved to 8-9.
Maeda Bradbury led Logansport with 10 points. The Lady Berries, who were playing the second game of a back-to-back after falling to Benton Central Tuesday, dropped to 1-16.
Hunter’s point total was a career high. She had 18 against North Judson and Culver last year. Her previous season high was 14 against Caston and Knox.
Rochester coach Joel Burrus said Hunter corrected a flaw in her shooting mechanics at halftime. She outscored the entire Logansport team 16-15 in the second half.
“The first half, she hit one, and then she was short on about three more, and I told her, ‘Everything’s fine. You’re just shooting the ball on the way down of your jump,’” Burrus said in a phone interview. “Well, she made the adjustment at halftime, and she came out in the third quarter, and I think she had 14 points in the third quarter. It was really good to see her come out and shoot the ball well. I told her even when she was missing a little bit in the second quarter, I said keep shooting it. At halftime, we made that adjustment with her shot, and she had to go out and do it, and she did it. It was good to see her be aggressive in that third quarter.”
Burrus also said Hunter has been working on her pullup jumper to help her get around defenses that close out hard to her at the 3-point arc.
“At the start of the year, she just could not hit that shot,” Burrus said. “She’s really gotten good at that shot. That 12-to-15-foot pullup, she’s really added that to her game.”
Burrus added that the Lady Zs have been working in practice on adding “wrinkles” to their offense against 2-3 zone defenses that try to clamp down on Rochester interior players Jadyn Field and Ali Field.
Both Logansport and Lewis Cass, their next opponent Saturday, play a 2-3 zone. Lewis Cass is 15-3 and both a conference rival and the defending sectional champion in Rochester’s sectional.
“I know last year I would have hid some of that stuff going into a game like that, but this is a group that needs reps,” Burrus said. “We just can’t go into a game and not have worked on it other than practice, and we felt like tonight was a perfect time to work on it because you’re facing a zone that’s similar to Cass. Obviously, Cass has got some really good players, but it was good for what we needed tonight.”
Burrus said Jadyn Field’s passing was important. When Jadyn Field draws a double team in the post, she often kicked out to Hunter or other open shooters.
“She did a good job of hitting the guard,” Burrus said. “When the double came, she did a good job of kicking that back out, and I thought our guards did a good job of relocating after they made that pass. We talk a lot about relocating on the post feed because now, when that double releases, now they’ve got to find you in the close out. She hit Hunter a couple times on the double. She kicked it back out, and Hunter hit the 3, and that’s good basketball.”
Rochester jumped out to a 16-4 lead.
Rochester beat Logansport for the third straight year. They have held Logansport to 21.3 points per game over those three games.
“We did a good job of keeping our pedal down, and we were able to get the young kids in as well, so that helped too with not having a JV game,” Burrus said. “All the JV kids played about five minutes in the fourth, so that was good too.”
Logansport coach Chris Keisling is the former assistant principal and principal at Rochester.
ROCHESTER (53) (8-9)
Aubrey Wilson 2 2-2 7, Brailyn Hunter 7 0-0 19, Adalyn Gonzalez 2 2-4 7, Jadyn Field 4 0-0 9, Ali Field 1 2-2 4, Hope Baugh 1 0-2 2, Lyla Bowers 0 0-0 0, Kyleigh Little 2 1-2 5, Kyla Conley 0 0-0 0, Jayla Miller 0 0-0 0, Alexandria Cortes-Gustafson 0 0-2 0, Bailey Smith 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 19 7-14 53
LOGANSPORT (22) (1-16)
Spradling 0 0-0 0, Bradbury 2 4-10 10, Clem 1 1-2 3, Kitchell 3 0-2 6, Risley 1 0-0 3, Messer 0 0-0 0, Knickrehm 0 0-0 0, Drummond 0 0-0 0, Espinola 0 0-0 0, Mateo 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 7 5-14 22
Three-point field goals:
Rochester 8 (Hunter 5, J. Field, Gonzalez, Wilson),
Logansport 3 (Bradbury 2, Risley)
Total fouls: Rochester 12, Logansport 12
Fouled out: Clem (LOG)
Score by quarters
Rochester 16 5 21 11 – 53
Logansport 4 3 7 8 – 22
