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BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
WABASH — Alaina Winer scored nine of her 12 points in the second half, including the go-ahead 3-point play with 2:29 left, to lift the Southwood girls basketball team to a 34-31 win over Rochester Saturday.
Ella Haupert led Southwood with 13 points, but she missed the front end of a one-and-one from the foul line with 3.5 seconds left with a chance to give Southwood a two-possession lead. That gave Rochester one last chance to tie the game, but Emma Howdeshell’s 40-foot heave at the buzzer was long.
Howdeshell scored a game-high 15 points for Rochester, and Rylee Clevenger added eight, including a 3-pointer in the fourth quarter.
Southwood snapped Rochester’s five-game winning streak and improved to 5-2 overall and 1-1 in the Three Rivers Conference. Rochester fell to 5-5, 2-1.
Rochester scored the first six points of the fourth quarter but came back to tie the game at 31 on a Howdeshell free throw with 3:06 left. Howdeshell then missed the second free throw attempt, but Sydney Haughs grabbed the offensive rebound.
She was fouled but missed the front end of a one-and-one, and Rochester never scored again.
Winer’s steal of an inbounds pass and coast-to-coast layup was accompanied by a Kallie Watson foul with 2:29 left. She sunk the free throw to complete the 3-point play.
Watson and Rylee Clevenger had 3-point attempts that could have tied the game, but both missed.
Rochester would foul Aleia Sweet with 8.2 seconds left, but Sweet missed the front end of a one-and-one, and Quinn Claussen fouled Howdeshell with 7.5 seconds left.
But she missed her front end of a one-and-one before Haupert was fouled.
Rochester made more free throws (11) than Southwood attempted (5), but the Lady Zs also missed 13 free throws. Rochester coach Joel Burrus called the missed free throws a “mental thing” afterwards.
“I always tell them I take these losses with them, and I still will,” Burrus said. “But I felt like we got what we wanted. … If you make half of those, you’re approaching a double-digit win.”
Like Rochester, Southwood also played a zone for the duration.
“We missed six to eight bunnies in the first half,” Burrus said. “We worked on that high-post flash, snapping that bounce pass down there and that dive the last two days. We didn’t make it.”
Southwood held Rochester to one field goal in the third quarter and turned a five-point halftime deficit into a 31-25 lead on a Winer 3-pointer with more than a minute left in the third quarter. It was one of four 3-pointers Southwood made in the third quarter and one of nine they made for the game.
“Our zone is a lot like (Rochester’s) zone,” Southwood coach Kenneth Norman said. “It’s all from the Burrus kinda tree. We want to put some pressure out there, and they were doing a good job of getting it to the middle, so we started playing it flatter, so they couldn’t get that, and I thought the second half … we took it away a little in the third.”
Rochester closed the first half on a 7-0 run to take a 22-17 lead at halftime. The run included a Watson 3-pointer and a Clevenger 3-point play.
But Sweet and Winer hit treys as part of an 8-0 Southwood run to start the second half, and the Lady Knights never trailed again.
Rochester sophomore forward Ella McCarter missed her second straight game with a hamstring injury.
Southwood won the JV game 17-10.
Southwood 34, Rochester 31
ROCHESTER (31) (5-5, 2-1)
Rily Holloway 1 0-2 3, Rylee Clevenger 2 3-5 8, Kallie Watson 1 0-0 3, Emma Howdeshell 3 8-13 15, Sydney Haughs 1 0-4 2, Maddie Heinzmann 0 0-0 0, Darah Strasser 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 8 11-24 31
SOUTHWOOD (34) (5-2, 1-1)
Ella Haupert 4 2-3 13, Makenna Younce 0 0-0 0, Aleia Sweet 2 0-1 6, Alaina Winer 4 1-1 12, Emmerson Chellis 0 0-0 0, Quinn Claussen 0 0-0 0, Meredith Norman 1 0-0 3, Gracie Lambert 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 11 3-5 34
Three-point field goals:
Rochester 4 (Howdeshell, Clevenger, Watson, Holloway),
Southwood 9 (Haupert 3, Winer 3, Sweet 2, Norman)
Total fouls: Rochester 14, Southwood 17
Score by quarters
Rochester 15 7 3 6 – 31
Southwood 11 6 14 3 – 34
