PLYMOUTH — A suffocating Plymouth defense made things real difficult on the Tippecanoe Valley girls basketball team Thursday night. Losing 49-33 at Plymouth (6-0), the Tippecanoe Valley Lady Vikings (3-2) scored just eight first-half points, connecting on 3 of 16 shots in the opening 16 minutes. “It was typical Plymouth defense,” Valley coach Chris Kindig said. “They’re a lot better defensively than they are offensively, I think. Their defense really sets the tone for them. They’re going to win a lot of games, because they’re going to be able to hold teams down to the 30s and 40s and they’re not going to have to score 60 every night. That’s a nice thing to have.” Plymouth is allowing 34.5 points per game, and according to coach Dave Duncan, the Lady Pilgrims recently added their top defensive player in junior guard Allie Wright. “This is Allie’s second game back and she really sets the tone on defense for us up front,” Duncan said of Wright, who didn’t score but did record five steals. “It was good seeing her back doing that. We were without her for a couple games because she broke her collarbone during the soccer season. Now, she’s back up pressuring and the other kids can do what they need to do. The defense really starts with her.” That defense was all over Valley early, and helped Plymouth build a 23-8 halftime lead. The Lady Vikings came out with a greater determination in the second half, and actually cut the lead to 37-33 with 3:55 remaining in the game. “We kind of quit attacking for a while,” Duncan said about allowing Valley back into the game. “At that point, that was probably a bad call on my part,” he added. “We needed to still be aggressive with the basketball. Plymouth did get aggressive on its ensuing possession. Holding the four-point lead, the Lady Pilgrims killed a minute-and-a-half of the clock before junior Kaydon Fosler made a move on the baseline, which drew defenders and left freshman center Nicole Horvath open under the hoop for an easy bucket. The field goal was the first of 12 unanswered points scored by the Lady Pilgrims, resulting in the 49-33 final score. “That was huge,” Duncan said of the Horvath bucket. What was huge for Valley was the absence of junior guard Caylie Teel, as well as senior center Sara Alexander. In Teel, who was wearing a brace on her wrist, Valley lost its most versatile player, who would have been chasing Plymouth junior Hunter Stevens in the box-and-one defense. “She’s not only the leader of our defense – she rebounds for us, she turns our break and she just does a lot of good things for us,” Kindig said of the speedy Teel. “Obviously, having that piece missing tonight was a factor, but the other girls have to step up.” With Teel out, freshman Meredith Brouyette had the assignment of following Stevens around, and it was a difficult request for the young player in her fifth high school game. Stevens finished the night making 9 of 12 shots, scoring a game-high 25 points, while also posting six rebounds. “She was our primary focus tonight,” Kindig said of the 5-foot-10 forward. “We talked about having to stop her, then Horvath and (junior guard Haley) Harrell. Stevens is so athletic and long. She gets the ball at the elbow area, then she can take it to the basket. She’s a nice player. It wasn’t any surprise what she did. We just would have liked to have done a better job on her.” Valley was led in scoring by junior Cara Hoffman’s 12 points, with 11 coming in the second half. In the post, freshman center Anne Secrest had 10 points, 13 rebounds and three steals, but struggled to find her touch around the basket. “I thought early in the game, she missed a couple inside shots that would have helped break the ice for us a little bit,” Kindig said. “She’s only a freshman. I know she’s playing really well, and this was the first road game for our freshmen. I thought they did well.” The road game was just the first of five straight for Valley in a two-week span, with the next one being its Three Rivers Conference opener at Wabash Saturday night. “We’re a young team and we’ll learn from this,” Kindig said. “We have a big game Saturday night at Wabash, and it will be nice to have Caylie back, but we don’t know if we will. Sara’s going to be day-to-day thing for us too. So, we can’t count on either one of them being there Saturday night. The group tonight will probably be the one we have Saturday, so they’ll have to get off to a better start.”
PLYMOUTH 49, TIPPECANOE VALLEY 33 V 4 4 11 14 – 33 P 6 17 9 17 – 49 Plymouth – Hunter Stevens 9-12 7-9 25, Kaydon Fosler 2-9 2-2 6, Haley Harrell 2-7 5-6 11, Allie Wright 0-0 0-2 0, Nicole Horvath 2-5 1-1 5, Bailey Brown 0-3 0-0 0, Dylan Holiday 0-0 0-0 0, Kara Morwood 0-0 0-0 0, Shannon Stephenson 1-2 0-0 2, Kirstin Riise 0-0 0-0 0. Totals 16-38 15-20 49. Valley – Karis Tucker 2-5 1-2 5, Meredith Brouyette 1-4 1-2 3, Cara Hoffman 5-14 2-3 12, Kelsey Ball 1-3 0-0 2, Anne Secrest 4-9 2-2 10, Taylor Trippiedi 0-0 0-0 0, Robyn Dunnuck 0-0 1-2 1, Hannah Dunn 0-2 0-0 0. Totals 13-37 7-11 33. 3-point goals – Plymouth 2-9 (Harrell 2), Valley 0-5; Team Fouls – Plymouth 14, Valley 17; Turnovers – Plymouth 17, Valley 21; Rebounds – Plymouth 27 (Stevens 6, Fosler 6), Valley 20 (Secrest 13); Assists – Plymouth 5, Valley 0; Steals – Plymouth 11 (Harrell 5, Wright 5), Valley 8 (Hoffman 3, Secrest 3); Blocks – Plymouth 3, Valley 1 Records: Plymouth 6-0, Valley 3-2 JV – Plymouth 35, Valley 26 Valley JV – Brynda Krueger 9, Morgan Brazo 7, Taneisha Brown 5, Casey Dunn 3, H. Dunn 2
