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Zimpleman adds 10, Douglass 9; Link leads Winamac with 13
BY VAL TSOUTSOURIS
Sports Editor, RTC
WINAMAC — Isabel Scales scored a game-high 18 points, and Addison Zimpleman added 10 for the Caston girls basketball team in a 47-33 win over host Winamac Saturday in the Hoosier North opener for both teams.
Freshman point guard Madi Douglass added nine for Class 1A, No. 4 Caston, who improved to 5-0 overall and 1-0 in the Hoosier North.
They also beat Winamac for the fourth straight year.
Piper Link scored 13 points to lead Winamac, who fell to 2-2, 0-1. Link scored in double figures for the third straight game.
Caston made nine of 11 free throws in the fourth quarter and 17 of 26 for the game.
Still, both teams scored a season-low in points.
“It was a very physical game,” Caston coach Josh Douglass said. “You had two high-powered offenses coming into this game, and you look at the final score. … I think that was due to just how physical the game was. Neither team offensively could get in any type of flow, just because of how physical it was.”
Winamac trailed 23-14 at halftime and got the deficit down to six on Kandace Kroft’s 3-pointer to start the second half.
But Douglass answered with her own trey, and Scales had a 3-point play off a putback to get the lead back to 29-19.
Winamac would creep within 34-26 on a Link up-and-under banker two minutes into the fourth quarter, and Marissa Iverson would follow with a blocked shot to give Winamac another chance to get closer.
But Douglass responded with a steal and a layup, and Zimpleman and Scales combined to make eight straight free throws. Macee Hinderlider also got a layup off a back cut and a Douglass assist.
Caston was coming off a 57-15 win over sectional rival North White Friday in which they were able to rest many of their starters in the fourth quarter. Meanwhile, Winamac was coming off a highly competitive 57-55 win over Argos Friday.
“One of the big things … tonight was the difference between each of our games last tonight,” Winamac coach Tony Stesiak said. “We had to fight to the very last second – literally – to get a win at Argos, and they cruised at North White. And that was a big difference. They had more legs than we did. I would have liked to have seen this game on fresh legs a little bit. But the schedule is what it is. We made them work ‘til the end. Nobody’s had them play down to the end, to the wire this year. I think that’s a nice accomplishment. I like a lot of things we did, but I think lack of legs, especially our kids that play a lot of minutes, from last night kind of caught up with us as the game wore on.”
Scales opened the scoring when she buried a left-corner 3-pointer, and Caston never trailed. Reserve forward Olivia Thomas buoyed the lead with two free throws and 15-foot jumper in the final minute of the first quarter. That sparked an 11-1 run which Zimpleman capped with a transition bucket off a Hinderlider assist to make it 20-9.
Trailing 21-14, Zimpleman fouled Iverson with 7.9 seconds left in the half. But she missed both free throws, and Douglass hit ahead to Zimpleman for an uncontested layup just before the halftime buzzer.
The lead was back to nine.
“If I remember right, it was a big rebound by Madi, and she found her the full length of the court there,” coach Douglass said. “That was huge because when you miss two and get the momentum on a made bucket at the buzzer, that’s huge going into halftime.”
Said Stesiak: “That was one of, I think, a couple big points. That was a little inexperience with the lineup on the floor: A freshman and a sophomore didn’t communicate what we were in, and then therefore after the free throw, things got a little switched around. A learning experience.”
Winamac won the JV game 38-34 behind Corinne Ulerick’s 18 points. Brody Goodman added nine, Kaelyn O’Connor had five, Cyaira Wolford had five, and Mershai Loehmer had one.
Autumn Miller topped the Caston JV with nine. Kylee Logan had eight, Grace Wright had six, Kylie Reidenbach had four, Natalie Warner and Camila Hernandez-Rios had three each, and Haley Miller had one.
Caston 47, Winamac 33
CASTON (47) (5-0, 1-0)
Macee Hinderlider 2 1-2 5, Addison Zimpleman 3 4-5 10, Madi Douglass 4 0-2 9, Isabel Scales 4 9-11 18, Alexa Finke 0 0-0 0, Olivia Thomas 1 2-4 4, Annie Harsh 0 1-2 1
TEAM: 14 17-26 47
WINAMAC (33) (2-2, 0-1)
Maggie Smith 1 0-0 2, Kandace Kroft 1 1-2 4, Sadie Popejoy 2 1-2 6, Piper Link 4 5-6 13, Lily Bennett 0 0-0 0, Brody Goodman 0 0-0 0, Mershai Loehmer 0 0-0 0, Marissa Iverson 3 2-6 8, Kaelyn O’Connor 0 0-2 0, Corinne Ulerick 0 0-0 0
TEAM: 11 9-18 33
Three-point field goals:
Caston 2 (Scales, Douglass),
Winamac 2 (Kroft, Popejoy)
Total fouls: Caston 13, Winamac 23
Fouled out: Kroft (WIN), 3:49, fourth; Link (WIN), 3:36, fourth
Turnovers: Caston 15, Winamac 24
Score by quarters
Caston 13 10 9 15 – 47
Winamac 8 6 8 11 – 33
JV: Winamac 38, Caston 34
