Rochester’s seniors hold off Caston comeback

Val T.

15 minutes ago

5 min read

Wilson, Hunter, Field combine for all 15 points in 2nd half; Douglass leads Caston with 14

BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS

Sports Editor, RTC

Aubrey WIlson Brailyn Hunter Jadyn Field

The Rochester girls basketball team’s 2-3 zone is no secret, yet it continues to grind teams into a pulp, even teams coming off two straight wins to open the season like Caston and even teams with future college players like Madi Douglass on them.

Douglass led all scorers with 14 points, but it was Rochester who hung on after building a 15-point halftime lead to beat the Lady Comets 36-28 at the RHS gym Saturday.

Aubrey Wilson led Rochester with 11 points, Brailyn Hunter had 10, and Jadyn Field added nine. Wilson, Hunter and Field – the team’s three senior starters – scored all 15 Rochester points in the second half.

After Rochester shut out Caston in the second quarter and built a 21-6 halftime lead, the Lady Comets came back to trim the margin to 25-20 on two Natalie Warner free throws with 6:28 left.

Jadyn Field responded with two baskets, both off assists from Ali Field, to push the lead back to nine.

Grace Colvin hit a 3-pointer for Caston to cut the margin to 29-23, but Jadyn Field scored again when a post entry pass deflected off Warner’s hands to Field, who laid it and drew Warner’s fifth foul.

Jadyn Field scored seven of Rochester’s 11 points in the fourth quarter.

“We’ve got a lot of things that we can clean up defensively, and you hold them to 28,” Rochester coach Joel Burrus said. “They are hard to handle because they’ve just got a lot of different people who can do different things. You’ve got Douglass, who can drive it and shoot it. But Colvin there late, she hit 41 3s last year. We had her labeled as the number one shooter, and I don’t know that she shot in the first half because we had really good closeouts to her.”

Colvin hit two 3-pointers in the second half and had eight for Caston. Allison Craig, who came in averaging 9.5 points per game, did not score. She did not play in the second half with what coach Josh Douglass described as an elbow injury.

Rochester improved to 2-0. Caston dropped to 2-1.

Rochester had been 1-4 in the Burrus era against Caston prior to Saturday, but they scored the first seven points of the game and never trailed this time.

Wilson opened the scoring with two free throws, Hunter hit a 3-pointer in transition after an Ali Field steal, and Ali Field hit two free throws.

Caston stayed within 12-6 on Colvin’s transition layup off a Douglass assist with one second left in the first quarter.

But those were Caston’s last points until the third quarter.

Hunter hit a 3 and then dished to Wilson for a 3 to make it 18-6. A Wilson free throw and a Hope Baugh 19-footer from the right corner pushed the lead to 15 at halftime.

“We talked about it, and you saw our response in the second half,” coach Douglass said. “If we played the whole game that way, it’s probably a different story tonight. But you can’t come out and spot somebody a lead like that and expect to be able to come back. But as I told the girls in the locker room there, I loved the second half. I loved the effort. We started going at them and not letting them come at us.

“The first half was really, really physical. We did not do a very good job of matching that at all in the first half, and that threw us off.”

Caston’s zone and a more aggressive Madi Douglass helped chew into Rochester’s lead in the third quarter. Madi Douglass hit a pullup jumper and a 3-pointer, and Hadlie Coffing hit a free throw as Caston needed only 1:49 to score as many points in the second half as they did in the entire first half.

Two Douglass free throws and a Coffing steal and layup cut the lead to 23-16. It was 25-18 going into the fourth quarter.

A nifty spin layup from Douglass as she was fouled and a Colvin trey kept Caston with 34-28 with 1:02 left.

“Douglass is hard to keep out of the lane, but things were kind of flipped there in that second half,” Burrus, who was Caston’s coach from 2014-16, said. “I’m going to have to look at the tape. I tell you what though. We hit some big free throws, and we were able to sit on the ball when we needed to. … Last year, we just couldn’t do that. A team would get after us in the fullcourt late in the game like that or get after us in the halfcourt in a trapping situation, and we would melt.”

Coach Douglass called Madi Douglass, a St. Mary’s recruit, the “best darn player in the area” and added that she is not playing at 100 percent. She is averaging 12.3 points per game just six months after surgery on a torn ACL suffered at an AAU game. She wore a brace on her right knee.

“To be able to go out there and do what she’s been doing is just pure grit and determination to get back,” coach Douglass said. “She’s worked really hard at it. … When the ball’s in her hands, good things are going to happen.”

Ali Field called the fourth quarter nerve wracking and called this win an upset based on last year’s 55-46 loss at Caston.

“The key defensively was just to try to keep her out of the lane,” Ali Field said of the defensive strategy against Madi Douglass. “Because last year, we didn’t keep her out of the lane, and she always went up and made layups, and I always got called for a foul. But this year, I think we did better at keeping her out of the lane. Especially with her knee injury, she’s not as fast, so there were a few times she got in the lane, but I think we did pretty good defensively stopping her.”

Rochester won the JV game 38-18.

Rochester 36, Caston 28

CASTON (28) (2-1)

Hadlie Coffing 1 1-2 3, Grace Colvin 3 0-0 8, Madi Douglass 5 3-7 14, Allison Craig 0 0-0 0, Ellie Zartman 0 0-0 0, Lexie Field 0 0-0 0, Adyson Steininger 0 0-2 0, Gigi Berry 0 0-0 0

TEAM: 9 7-15 28

ROCHESTER (36) (2-0)

Aubrey Wilson 2 6-10 11, Brailyn Hunter 2 4-6 10, Adalyn Gonzalez 0 0-0 0, Jadyn Field 4 1-3 9, Ali Field 1 2-2 4, Lyla Bowers 0 0-0 0, Hope Baugh 1 0-0 2, Kyleigh Little 0 0-0 0

TEAM: 10 13-21 36

Three-point field goals:

Caston 3 (Colvin 2, Douglass),

Rochester 3 (Hunter 2, Wilson)

Total fouls: Caston 18, Rochester 19

Fouled out: Gonzalez (RHS), 5:53, fourth; Warner (CAS), 3:01, fourth; A. Field (RHS), 2:31, fourth

Turnovers: Caston 18, Rochester 11

Score by quarters

Caston 6 0 12 10 – 28

Rochester 12 9 4 11 – 36

JV: Rochester 38, Caston 18