Clevenger hits 4 treys, Field adds 11 as Rochester handles Logansport

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

Jadyn Field

LOGANSPORT — The Rochester girls basketball team went on a 25-0 run in the second half against host Logansport at the Berry Bowl Wednesday.

In and of itself, that might be considered newsworthy. That Rylee Clevenger, Ella McCarter and Aubrey Wilson – the team’s top three scorers – combined for only two of the points during the run might be the real shocker.

In fact, McCarter, who led Rochester in scoring with 13 in their previous game against Whitko, was held scoreless for the game. But coach Joel Burrus later said that McCarter only cares about winning, not scoring, and the Lady Zs snapped their two-game losing streak with a 52-24 win.

Clevenger hit four first-half 3-pointers and

Mia Howdeshell

led Rochester with 14 points before resting in the fourth quarter. McCarter also rested in the fourth quarter with a Three Rivers Conference showdown against conference leader Lewis Cass at home at 6 p.m. Saturday.

Jadyn Field added 11 points and seven rebounds, and Audrey Bolinger had nine points and six rebounds.

One game after making just three of nine free throws against Whitko, Rochester went 13 for 17 in this game. Meanwhile, Logansport did not attempt a free throw after the first quarter.

Kellyn Cripe led the Lady Berries with eight points. Lydia Goad, Logansport’s leading scorer on the season, came in averaging 12 but was held to seven.

Rochester improved to 10-9. They have not had more than a two-game winning streak or a two-game losing streak this season.

Rochester has four wins against teams that beat them last season. (Northwestern, Southwood and North Miami are the other three.)

“I know that all of us definitely were down about it,” Bolinger said of the Whitko loss. “Because we were 5-0 in conference, but we knew that we just wanted to get better and continue to get better so then we could beat Lewis Cass and continue to play for that because we still have a shot at TRC, so we wanted to get back and really fight for it.”

Logansport dropped their seventh straight game and fell to 2-15.

Logansport started in a 2-3 zone defense, but coach Chris Keisling switched to a triangle-in-two defense after Clevenger hit three 3-pointers in the first quarter to help the Lady Zs to a 12-2 lead.

“We put in an overload set for this game if they went to more of their halfcourt zone to get her the ball in the corner,” Rochester coach Joel Burrus said of the strategic part of getting Clevenger more open 3-point looks. “Well, you saw that lifted the lid off the top was getting her the ball down in the corners, and she hit two or three of those, and that got them out of what they wanted to do. And we were able to get a lot of good looks. I thought the posts did a good job.”

Bolinger is one of those posts, and she has played a larger role this season after receiving spare varsity minutes as a freshman two years ago and missing last season following knee surgery.

“I’ve been building them up,” Bolinger said of her post moves. “And we do a lot of it at practice. We’ve been doing a lot of post moves, and (assistant coach Nate) Basham and (volunteer assistant) coach (Joe) McCarter have been really helping us with it. … So it’s just pretty much all building up from basketball practice and just getting strong repeatedly doing it.”

In the triangle-in-two, Clevenger and McCarter received man-to-man attention while the other three defenders played zone.

Clevenger’s fourth trey came with nine seconds left in the half on a give-and-go inbounds play to make it 21-9.

But the Lady Berries recuperated at the start of the third quarter, holding Rochester without a field goal for the first four-and-a-half minutes and getting within 23-16 on a Cripe 3 from the left of the key.

Then came the Rochester run.

Mia Howdeshell had not made a 3-pointer in five games, but she promptly hit two in a row. A Brailyn Hunter layup made it a 15-point lead. A Field putback led to a 3-point play. Then Hunter swished a 3.

Logansport tried to trap Clevenger in front of the Rochester bench, but she maintained her dribble, worked her way around the trap, penetrated into the lane and found Bolinger for a layup. Two Clevenger free throws with 7.3 seconds closed out the quarter and extended the lead to 25.

Two Field free throws, a Bolinger short banker, a Field layup off a Wilson assist and a Howdeshell free throw completed the run and made it 48-16.

Logansport went over eight-and-a-half minutes without scoring in the second half.

“That’s more of a page out of my dad’s (Maconaquah boys coach John Burrus) book there,” Burrus said of a defense that resembled a halfcourt trap. “We talked this weekend, and I wanted something to see if we weren’t scoring, something that could create offense for us. Obviously, against Whitko, we had to go to the press. We wanted to be able to do it out of the halfcourt tonight. The one thing that I love about Ella is she could give a rip about scoring; she cares that we won, and that’s when you know you’ve got a special kid.”

This marked the fifth time this season that Logansport has scored fewer than 30 points in a game.

“The one thing that we’ve struggled with is certainly our shooting,” Keisling, who was a Rochester administrator from 2014-21 before returning to coaching at Logansport, said. “We struggle to try to keep pace with any kind of a team. A lot of times, we just hit dry spells that are just awful. And probably one of my best shooters on the floor, when they go 0 for 4 or 0 for 5 on wide-open looks, that’s kind of been the story. We just haven’t been able to keep that kind of thing going.

“And because we’re young, we have defensive breakdowns, and we start to lose the kind of focus we need defensively. … But I think also on Rochester’s side of things, they did what I think a team that has now got some kids with a year under their belt and start to play good ball do, and they played good, consistent basketball on both ends of the floor, and they did a nice job, and Joel’s done a nice job with them.”

Rochester 52, Logansport 24

ROCHESTER (52) (10-9)

Aubrey Wilson 2 0-0 4, Rylee Clevenger 4 2-2 14, Ella McCarter 0 0-0 0, Jadyn Field 2 7-7 11, Audrey Bolinger 4 1-2 9, Brailyn Hunter 2 2-4 7, Mia Howdeshell 2 1-2 7

TEAM: 16 13-17 52

LOGANSPORT (24) (2-15)

Kellyn Cripe 3 0-0 8, Aracyn Good 1 2-2 5, Lydia Goad 3 0-0 7, Rylinn Spradling 0 0-0 0, Goldie Kitchell 0 0-0 0, Teagan Wolf 1 0-0 2, Taliyah McCray 0 0-0 0, Adrienne Scott 1 0-0 2, Megan Walker 0 0-0 0, Unidentified No. 40 0 0-0 0

TEAM: 9 2-2 24

Three-point field goals:

Rochester 7 (Clevenger 4, Howdeshell 2, Hunter),

Logansport 4 (Cripe 2, Good, Goad)

Total fouls: Rochester 6, Logansport 17

Fouled out: McCray (LOG), 3:28, fourth

Turnovers: Rochester 19, Logansport 22

Score by quarters

Rochester 12 9 20 11 – 52

Logansport 2 7 7 8 – 24