ROCHESTER – Coach Adam Heckaman didn't see the desire his Class 1A No. 5 Triton girls basketball team needed in a 36-33 loss Wednesday at Rochester High School. Trailing by as many as nine late in the third quarter, the Lady Trojans (8-1) fought back to tie the game at 33-33 following a three-pointer by sophomore Taylor Hatfield with 1:08 remaining in the game. However, the Rochester Lady Zebras (6-2) found a way to pull out the win. "Rochester's a good team," Heckaman said. "They've won a lot of games for a reason. They played very good defense. I didn't feel like we came out with any kind of passion, until two minutes into the fourth. Then, we decided to get after it." Following Hatfield's trey, Rochester sophomore Kaelee Smith gave her team a 34-33 by making one of two free throws, setting the stage for a dramatic finale. After making her first free throw, Smith's second was off, Triton senior Megan Howdeshell mishandled the rebound and watched as it fell out of bounds, going back to Rochester. Trailing by one, Triton freshman Krystal Sellers got a steal with 20 seconds remaining, giving the Lady Trojans a shot for their first lead of the game. Following timeouts by each team, Triton junior Shana Anderson made a drive to the basket, rose up and shot a floater with under 10 seconds remaining, but it rimmed out and Rochester came up with the rebound. "Shana got a great look," Heckaman said. "It rattles in and out, but that's the way the ball bounces sometimes." Following the defensive board, senior Abbie Malchow converted two free throws, giving Triton one last shot at a tie, but a three-pointer by Anderson was tightly contested, with the deflected ball coming out to junior Breanna Lemler, who had her attempt at a game-tying trey go off target. "The girls finally realized we can't wait until we're down to get after it," Heckaman said. "It caught up with us." Scoring 12 points in the final quarter, the Lady Trojans found a way to attack Rochester's zone defense, which had forced Triton to pass the ball around the horn for most of the first half. "We just did the small things, finally," Heckaman said about his team's fourth-quarter mindset. "We made the extra pass, we drove at the seams of the zone. We attacked instead of being complacent and passing the ball around, and that makes the biggest difference." With a lot of his players feeling under the weather, Rochester's zone defense worked twofold for Tony Stesiak's team. "We thought if the game was a little bit slower pace, more methodical, at the start that would build our confidence and save our legs, because we knew it would be a tight one in the fourth," he said. And while Triton was struggling to get inside Rochester's zone, the same couldn't be said for the Lady Zebras' penetration into the Lady Trojan's defense. Routinely in the first quarter, the Lady Zebras got the ball to the free-throw line area, then dumped it down to the post for an easy layup, as senior Jenna Crispen scored eight first-quarter points via wide-open shots from the block. "We knew they were going to come out in a 1-3-1 or 3-2, so we worked really hard on that the past two days," Stesiak said. "We thought, if we had good ball movement and if the post could get to their spots, the blocks would be wide open." And it was, as Rochester made 5 of 6 shots in the opening quarter, putting Triton in a 10-2 hole before the road team scored the last four points of the quarter in the final 24 seconds. "Rochester came out and wanted to be the first team to beat us," Heckaman said. "Our girls just weren't quite ready for that." Triton was led by Anderson's nine points, while Lemler came off the bench to post six points and a team-high seven rebounds. Things don't get much easier for the Lady Trojans, as they play their third of five-straight road games Wednesday at 6-1 Warsaw. "All of our goals are still in place," Heckaman said. "Bottom line is, they're crying and they're upset, and I'm glad. It tells me they don't come into any game expecting to lose and when they do, they're upset about it."
