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Egolf scores 17, Miller tallies career-high 15 in win over Culver Academy
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
CULVER — The Tippecanoe Valley girls basketball team lost five seniors off a regional championship team, but if there are supposed to be rough patches in getting a new group to gel, they do not appear to have happened yet.
Ava Egolf scored a game-high 17 points, and fellow senior Chesnee Miller added a career-high 15, including her first career 3-pointer, to lead the visiting Tippecanoe Valley girls basketball team to a 56-33 win over sectional rival Culver Academy Tuesday.
Valley won their third straight game to start the season. Culver Academy dropped to 2-2.
Gaby Gonzalez added six points, all in the third quarter, including the go-ahead 3-pointer that gave Valley a 31-28 lead with just over three minutes left. She also made two dazzling passes in transition, one to Kelsey Cox and one to Miller in the fourth quarter as part of a game-ending 22-1 run.
Cox added eight points, and Macy Petersen had seven points and six rebounds off the bench. Petersen’s night included a driving banker right before the first-half buzzer and a putback bucket after Miller missed a left baseline 15-footer that triggered the decisive game-ending run.
“I think we wore them down in the second half,” Valley coach Chris Kindig said.
Freshman reserve Jimara Combs hit three 3-pointers and led Culver Academy with 14 points, but she left the game with 6:35 left with an apparent right foot injury and did not return.
Piper Brumm, a Winamac native, added nine for the Lady Eagles.
But Culver Academy committed 22 turnovers while Valley committed just five. In the fourth quarter, Culver Academy had nine turnovers while Valley had one.
Valley committed 22 turnovers themselves in a win over South Bend St. Joe Saturday.
“We came into it averaging about 20 turnovers a game,” Kindig said. “So that was obviously a huge turnaround for us. I’d have to look and see what we had on points off those turnovers. In that first game (against Bremen), I think we had 30 points off turnovers. The next game, we had like 16 or so. So I’d be interested to see what we got off those. Quite a bit, I think.
“They had a little bit of trouble with our halfcourt trap, particularly in the second half. We went man for about three to four minutes. Our man was really good. I don’t think they scored during that period of time, and we were able to push that out, and then we got a double-digit lead there, and that was the basketball game from there. But our defense won us this game, no question about it.”
Culver Academy freshman point guard Kayla Herron cut the Valley lead to 34-32 with a sharp drive from the right wing for a layup in early offense with a minute-and-a-half left in the third quarter.
That turned out to be Culver Academy’s last field goal.
Transition buckets from Carlee Snyder off a Gonzalez assist and Miller with five seconds left in the quarter followed Petersen’s putback and got the lead to 40-32 after three quarters.
Valley then fed off the turnovers in the fourth quarter, scoring four of their six field goals on the break, including a lefty bounce pass from the left wing that threaded the needle and hit Cox in stride and another bounce pass that made its way to Miller for another fast break bucket.
Valley mixed defenses and had success with both a 1-3-1 with Miller on top and a man-to-man.
“That was the difference for me is we were able to turn them over at the top, attack the basket and get some easy layups,” Kindig said. “Chesnee Miller, except for the 3-pointer at the end of the first half, the rest of those were layups off steals and transition-type stuff.”
Gonzalez was the leading scorer on the JV last year but is the full-time varsity point guard as a sophomore this time. She plays for City Elite during the summer, a travel team based out of Michigan. She said the physical nature of travel ball prepared her for high school ball.
She and Miller affected the game with their defense.
“Well, we changed up our defense midway through, and that made them mess up because they didn’t know what was coming,” Gonzalez said. “So it caught them off-guard, and they got flustered and just gave us the steals.”
Culver Academy scored the first four points of the game and still led 7-6 before Miller swished a trey at the buzzer. Valley never trailed again, though the pesky Lady Eagles tied it at 18-18 in the second quarter and at 25-25 and 28-28 in the third quarter.
“We talked about it,” Culver Academy coach Bill Murchie said of the turnovers. “We had to keep it less than 15. We had seven at half, so we track it. Obviously, we do our stats, but at the end of the day, we probably had a lot in the fourth (nine). … I bet you they had 20 points in transition offense.”
In the JV game, Valley trailed 26-17 in the fourth quarter before finishing with a 13-0 run to win 30-26. Hailey Stookey scored the go-ahead basket with under 30 seconds left, and Hadley Wise preserved the win when she made two free throws with 2.3 seconds left.
Wise led with eight points. Dalynne Bussard added six, Maycee Koch and Lindahl Walls had five each, and Stookey and Lucy Hayden had three each.
Valley 56, Culver Academy 33
VALLEY (56) (3-0)
Gaby Gonzalez 2 1-1 6, Chesnee Miller 6 2-2 15, Ava Egolf 4 9-14 17, Ava Smith 0 0-0 0, Kelsey Cox 3 2-2 8, Hadley Wise 0 0-0 0, Macy Petersen 3 1-2 7, Hailey Stookey 0 0-0 0, Carlee Snyder 1 1-2 3, Lucy Hayden 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 19 16-23 56
CULVER ACADEMY (33) (2-2)
Reid Seddelmeyer 0 0-0 0, Kayla Herron 2 0-0 5, Piper Brumm 3 2-2 9, Amelia Binkley 1 0-0 2, Jenna Kerr 1 0-0 2, Lilah Treber 0 0-2 0, Mimi Smith 0 0-0 0, Kenzie Miller 0 0-0 0, Jimara Combs 4 3-4 14, Kate Clemons 0 1-2 1, Hannah Kresser 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 11 6-10 33
Three-point field goals:
Valley 2 (Miller, Gonzalez),
Culver Academy 5 (Combs 3, Brumm, Herron)
Total fouls: Valley 15, Culver Academy 16
Turnovers: Valley 5, Culver Academy 22
Score by quarters
Valley 9 13 18 16 – 56
Culver Academy 7 11 14 1 – 33
JV: Valley 30, Culver Academy 26
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