Triton Basketball: Lady Trojans Close With OD Loss
HAMLET — It was a pretty tough note for Triton’s girls basketball team to end the season on.
After giving host Oregon-Davis all it could handle in a regular-season game a month ago, the Lady Trojans were hoping to break through in Friday’s Sectional 51 rematch. But the shots simply wouldn’t fall, the Trojans couldn’t buy a call over the second half, and Triton suffered a lopsided, 45-29 defeat to its sectional arch-rival.
To add injury to insult, sophomore starter Whytnie Miller twisted her knee after drawing contact slashing to the basket with just 20 seconds remaining. Miller was helped off the floor by head coach Adam Heckaman and the Trojans’ athletic trainer and was later diagnosed with a torn ACL. The play was ruled a travel, and OD junior Cassidy Stout threw a full court pass to senior Kandis Sauer for a transition layup on the ensuing inbounds play that brought the score to its final margin.
Yes, it was exactly that kind of night for Triton.
“She tore her ACL. She drove in there, got bumped, got knocked off balance, came down funny and got called for a travel,” said Heckaman of the late play that served as a sort of microcosm of the entire night.
The Trojans were pretty shaky at the outset, too.
The Lady Cats scored 11 unanswered points to start the game as part of a 13-2 first quarter. Triton (10-13) turned the ball over on five of its first seven possessions against OD’s full court press and finished the first quarter with seven giveaways for eight points off turnovers by the hosts.
“Our big thing is we want to make it an 84-foot game,” said OD coach Terry Minix. “Getting off to that start is what we try to do, and we’re going to try to get you to go a little faster than what you want to go.”
The visitors whittled that initial deficit down to single digits on several occasions but never got any closer than eight points. Foul trouble didn’t make things any easier, either. Starters Hannah Wanemacher and Jaela Faulkner both fouled out in the fourth — Wanemacher with nearly three minutes still left to play — and OD (12-12) took 14 trips to the line over the final eight minutes as the Trojans were whistled for 14 fouls compared to five fouls by the Bobcats in the second half.
“We didn’t start well. I think the rest of the game was relatively even. We were like 13-2 in the first quarter. It ended up being more than that, but a lot of that is free throws at the end,” explained Heckaman. “We kept it within 11 the rest of the game. We cut it to eight a couple times, but we just couldn’t quite get over that hump.”
Triton’s season was marked by intermittent shooting woes, and that trouble scoring the ball reared its ugly head again in Friday’s closer as the Trojans finished 12 of 39 (30.7 percent) from the floor despite working for numerous good looks. Nicole Sechrist finished with 10 points as the only Triton player in double figures — including a pair of big 3s in the second half — to go with four assists and six rebounds. Miller scored six points with three steals and two assists before her injury, but Wanemacher was limited to just three points after pouring in a game-high 20 in her team’s first go-round with OD back on Jan. 3.
“That’s been a little bit of a struggle for us all year, putting the ball in the basket. Of course we picked the wrong night to not make a few of them,” Heckaman said. “I thought we did a good job of responding. We got Nikki involved there, getting her in the middle, but she missed a few in there. Hannah didn’t shoot quite as well as she usually shoots. And they got to the free throw line a lot, and we didn’t. It was rough.”
The Cats benefitted from a balanced offense, meanwhile.
Freshman Mercedes Rhodes finished with 11 points, while sophomores Katie Sauer and Jayden Worthington collected 15 points apiece, Sauer’s earned mostly from beyond the arc and Worthington’s inside the paint.
“I think one of the advantages that we have — I know she’s only a sophomore — is Jayden Worthington because she is one of the truest posts in this sectional. She does play with her back to the basket, and she’s comfortable,” Minix said. “She’s getting better; she struggled for a little while early in the year with her footwork a little bit. The last three or four weeks we’ve really been working with her on doing a better job with her footwork, and tonight I thought she had a great game.”
Triton bids goodbye to three-year leading scorer Wanemacher, Sechrist and fellow senior Charlotte Morris. It’s not a large senior group, but it’s one that’ll be tough for the program to replace.
“Nikki, Hannah, Charlotte, I’m proud of those kids. I told them in the locker room they did a lot of things for us this year,” said Heckaman. “They came a long way — Hannah, being our leader in scoring; Nikki out there kind of an all-purpose player, doing everything we needed her to. And I told Charlotte she’s probably the most selfless kid that I’ve ever coached. Torn ACL and meniscus coming into the season, but she toughed it out so she could help Chelsea (Johnson) learn. Didn’t complain about not playing as much as she probably would’ve liked to her senior year but helped other kids get better. I’m really proud of them.”
OD advances to play Argos (13-9) — which advanced with a 39-14 defeat of Culver Community in Friday’s early semifinal — in tonight’s championship at 7 p.m. ET. The game will be a rubber match between the rivals after a 56-43 win by the Cats in their first meeting on Jan. 11 and a 65-53 reprisal by the Dragons at the Bi-County Tournament a week later.
“Any time you battle Gary Teel’s team, they’re very solid. They’ve been there; obviously they’ve been to the state finals,” said Minix of the match-up. “Macee (Strycker) can shoot the ball, and it’s going to be a lot like this game we had tonight. We’ve got a shooter like Macee and then you’ve some decent people on the inside. We’re going to have to play a lot better than we did against them the first time. We’ll see.”