LAKEVILLE – Old Rochester girls basketball head coach Bob Hohne wasn’t about to make excuses for his team’s loss earlier in the season to Apponequet.
Last night, the team let their play on the court do the talking. The Bulldogs (13-1) avenged their only loss of the season with a 44-38 road victory over their South Coast Conference rival.
Both teams now are currently tied atop the South Coast Conference Small Division with one loss. If both teams win out, the tie-breakers do not favor anyone and a coin-flip would determine the team to play in the SCC Championship.
“It’s the first time that we have a big and a small in the South Coast Conference this year. That’s kind of how it’s going,” said Apponequet head coach Trevor Gagnier. “If it comes down to a coin flip, it’s just a 50-50 shot, which is unfortunate, because I think these are the best two teams in the league, but unfortunately we’re not going to play (against each other) for the league championship. One of us will be playing somewhere else.”
The Lakers (11-4 overall, 10-1 in SCC) seemed well on their way to finishing off Old Rochester in the first half. The Bulldogs could not figure out Sophia Gaucher, who exceeded her 14.1 PPG in the first half, scoring 16 of her game-high 26 points in the first half as the Lakers ended the second quarter on a 7-0 run to take a 23-16 lead into the locker room.
“We went to a two-up and I think it slowed Gaucher down because we were running the double ladder and she had to give up the ball,” said Hohne. “That’s when we went on that little bit of a surge as Gaucher had to (pass) and they started to turn the ball over.”
Hohne’s halftime adjustments were just what the Bulldogs ordered as the fast-paced defensive rotation created three consecutive turnovers to start the third quarter. Brianna Machado (eight points) and Cassidy Yeomans, Old Rochester’s leading scorer, each hit a pair of 3-pointers apiece to cap an 11-0 run to start the second half.
The stingy Old Rochester defense led by Yeomans, who scored 11 of her 13 points in the second half along with Meg Hughes shut down Apponequet for the first 3:15 of the third quarter and continued to pound away to retake the lead 34-33 at the end of three.
“Talk about winning the third quarter. Old Rochester wins it in the first 35 seconds,” said Gagnier. “We had a couple of breakdowns defensively, they bank a couple of threes, and at that point it’s a one-point basketball game but I felt we did a good job competing.”
The game was won on the glass in the fourth with Mary Butler leading the way with 19 rebounds in the game, six coming off the offensive side. Butler finished with 10 points with all of her points coming off offensive rebounds to keep the Bulldogs out in front the rest of the way.
But the most important play for Butler was when the sophomore forward extended out of the paint on defense and blocked a 3-pointer from Gaucher with 1:47 left in regulation that would have cut the Lakers’ deficit to two. Yeomans finished off the Lakers going 2-for-2 from the line with 14.6 seconds left to lengthen the contest to a three-possession game.
“Mary is a relentless rebounder and the heart and soul in terms of the middle and I’ve been trying to encourage the other bigs to rebound as much but I think we tend to rely too much (on Butler),” said Hohne. “Cassidy is a marked girl averaging almost 19 points a game and what we try to do is encourage all the other girls to take their shots and that’s what we are finally starting to do.”
