Second Quarter Dooms Triton Versus OD
BOURBON — Despite a 10-day layover, it wasn’t a holiday hangover that got Triton Wednesday night.
The Lady Trojans felt prepared for rival Oregon-Davis coming into the game, and they looked it, too, leading 12-6 at the first quarter break. But a 26-3 second period left the home team in a pretty sizable halftime hole, and the Lady Cats ran out to a 67-42 win over their Sectional 51 foes at the Trojan Trench.
“The girls have worked hard at it, and they’ve been getting ready. We felt pretty prepared, and I thought we showed that we were pretty prepared,” said Triton coach Adam Heckaman. “We just can’t seem to quite put four quarters of that together yet. We’ll go through a good quarter, a bad quarter, decent quarter and then another good quarter. If we could just put a decent quarter in there instead of that bad quarter, I think we’d give ourselves some chances against teams like OD and South Central and some of the teams in our sectional.”
OD made just 2-of-15 shots while falling behind in the opening stanza. Once the Cats’ shots started to fall, it gave them the opportunity to set up in their trademark, full-court trapping defense. The visitors turned their hosts over 18 times during a 26-3 second quarter that included nearly four-and-a-half scoreless minutes by the Trojans. OD quickly pushed that 32-15 halftime cushion out to 20 points in the third quarter and led by as many as 27 in the period en route to its fourth straight win. All told, the Cats turned Triton over a total of 27 times and capitalized with 31 points off those miscues.
“The press didn’t hurt us in the first quarter. It hurt us in the second quarter because we hurt ourselves,” explained Heckaman. “We know they’re going to do it. I thought we were pretty prepared for it. They just speed you up, and we sped ourselves up and made bad decisions, and when we made bad decisions they capitalized. They gapped us pretty big in the second quarter, and we couldn’t catch up.”
OD’s swarming defensive pressure and transition offense led to five players finishing with double-digit offensive output. Mercedes Rhodes scored a game-high 16 points, Jayden Worthington scored 15 points with seven rebounds battling through illness, Katelyn Sauer notched 14 points with three steals and five rebounds, Rikki Risner put up 12 points, and Reece Danford tallied 10 for the Cats.
“In our last game we had four kids in double figures,” recalled OD coach Terry Minix. “Everybody knows that Mercedes can score. The nice thing is Katie is capable of scoring 20, 20-plus easily, and Jayden, when she’s healthy she can score you 20-plus. Now having Rikki Risner who can shoot the ball, and we’ve got Cass Stout back from her concussion protocol and she can shoot the basketball… we’ve got five or six kids who can score in double figures at any point in time.”
Triton got eight points apiece from Delanie Groves and Alyxa Viers, while freshmen Taren Yates got the start and seven points Wednesday. Jaela Faulkner scored on 6-of-9 attempts from the floor on her way to a team-high 13 points while passing out three assists attacking off the dribble both in the full- and the half-court.
“We brought Taren (Yates) in tonight and tried to get her to help a little bit and I thought she did a pretty good job in the first quarter, but for a freshman it gets a little overwhelming for a whole game,” Heckaman said. “I thought Jaela was trying to do what she could in the second quarter and struggled a little bit there, but she bounced back in the second half and played great for us. She finally got comfortable going towards the basket and being aggressive, trying to score. That’s something we want her to continue to look to do.”
The two teams could meet again in the Bi-County Tournament beginning Jan. 15 and then a possible third time during Class A, Sectional 51 play when the tournament begins at the end of this month.
“This is a tough place to play,” said Minix of the Trench. “It’s a beautiful gym now. The floor is incredible. I told Mason they did a great job, and I’m very impressed. It’s just a tough place to play year-in and year-out. Adam Heckaman is probably one of the better coaches in the northern part of the state, in my opinion, so any time you play him you know what you’re going to get with his kids. So it’s a good win for us, and we’ve just got to build off of it.”
Triton (4-13) looks to snap a string of three straight losses with a Hoosier North Conference road game at Winamac next Tuesday. OD (8-6) will host Lighthouse CPA Friday night in Hamlet.