BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
KOKOMO — There was traffic in Howard County Wednesday night.
Specifically, it was in the paint at Northwestern High School, where all Rochester girls basketball players were diverted away.
Rochester did sink six 3-pointers against the host Lady Tigers, but they did not make a two-point field goal and lost 47-20.
McKenna Layden, a senior who signed a national letter of intent earlier in the day to play collegiately at Purdue, scored a game-high 16 points for Northwestern, and sophomore post player Berkley Wray added 12.
Layden hit a pair of 3-pointers and also grabbed a team-high seven rebounds.
Rily Holloway and Rylee Clevenger scored seven points each to lead Rochester, who fell to 0-3. Emma Howdeshell added six.
Sydney Haughs did not score but did lead Rochester with seven rebounds. Kallie Watson came off the bench and made her season debut but did not score. She had missed the first two games with an ankle injury.
“I felt like we did a really good job of containing her in the first quarter,” Rochester coach Jel Burrus said of Layden. “A player like that, eventually, they’re going to cut it loose. There’s not too many Big Ten players on our schedule.”
Northwestern improved to 1-2.
Northwestern went on a 12-0 run covering the first and second quarters to grab a 15-3 lead, and they led by as many as 34 points in the fourth quarter.
Rochester committed 17 turnovers as compared to Northwestern’s seven.
“They had that false front that they were packed in a 2-3 (zone), and then they brought the heat out,” Burrus said. “We did not, and we talked about it, and we should have had the high post there, and you saw later on, we picked up. But the other thing is too, our guards, as we get further into the season, they’ve got to identify these fronts. And we’ve talked to them about that, and we’ve been running different actions in practice to try to get them to see when the defense is in a different front because when you’re bringing the ball up the floor, we need to be able to see what they’re in and start to recognize that so we can get in the right set or the man offense versus the zone offense. We’re still working on that.”
Northwestern coach Kathie Layden said defense was an emphasis. She said that defense can always be consistent.
“To be honest with you, we were just really trying to focus on team defense and communicating,” coach Layden said. “We tried to switch up the defenses quite a bit just to try to work on things. With it being early in the season, just kind of see what we’re good at at this point. But we were trying to pressure the ball and deny on the wings.”
Northwestern 47, Rochester 20
ROCHESTER (20) (0-3)
Rily Holloway 2 1-2 7, Rylee Clevenger 2 1-2 7, Emma Howdeshell 2 0-0 6, Ella McCarter 0 0-0 0, Sydney Haughs 0 0-1 0, Maddie Heinzmann 0 0-0 0, Kallie Watson 0 0-0 0, Mia Howdeshell 0 0-0 0, Darah Strasser 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 6 2-5 20
NORTHWESTERN (47) (1-2)
Anna Bishir 2 0-0 4, Ashley Newell 2 0-0 4, McKenna Layden 7 0-0 16, Bailey Henry 1 0-0 2, Lexi Hale 3 1-2 7, Makenna Adams 0 0-0 0, Halie Koetter 1 0-0 2, Savanah Lipinski 0 0-0 0, Berkley Wray 6 0-1 12, Kendal Ziems 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 22 1-3 47
Three-point field goals:
Rochester 6 (Howdeshell 2, Holloway 2, Clevenger 2),
Northwestern 2 (Layden 2)
Total fouls: Rochester 6, Northwestern 11
Turnovers: Rochester 17, Northwestern 7
Score by quarters
Rochester 3 3 6 8 – 20
Northwestern 5 16 17 9 – 47
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