WOMEN’S BASKETBALL

The #RV Forester women’s basketball team escaped Garth Pleasant Arena with a 59-55 win over #RV Rochester College Tuesday night. The loss is the Warriors’ first of the year as they drop to 6-1 while HU improves to 5-1.

Huntington currently boasts a 3-1 record over WHAC schools.

Defense was the name of the game as points didn’t come easy for either team. It didn’t start off that way for the visitors as they jetted out to a 7-0 lead. Maddie Richer opened up play with her 13th long ball of year and then tossed in five more points in the quarter to give HU a 19-9 advantage at the first break.

Richer passed the baton to Sarah Fryman and Erica Zook in the second quarter as each posted four points in the first four minutes to extend Huntington’s lead to 27-11. A Rochester timeout upped the hosts’ intensity and so began the comeback compliments of their gritty defense.

The Warriors forced HU to cough up the ball five out of their next six possessions to cut into the lead by six points. With momentum clearly swinging in favor of RC, intermission couldn’t come soon enough for a Forester clan eager to regroup while still clinging to a 32-27 lead.

The struggle continued into the third. Rochester drained back-to-back threes to claim its first advantage of the night at 33-32. That lead extended to three by the midway point of the quarter. Richer finally came to the rescue with a three in the corner to break HU’s five-minute scoring drought and force the first of three ties in the quarter.

The third also saw the lead pass back and forth three times before the final lead change proved permanent when Casey Morton buried one from downtown in the waning seconds to give HU a 46-43 advantage.

With both teams in lockdown mode defensively, the scoreboard didn’t change for the first three minutes of the fourth. Rochester finally scored down low but it was the Sarah Fryman show after that. The 5-9 forward scored the game’s next six points within a 90-second span to cushion the lead to 52-45 with just over five minutes remaining.

The Warriors responded with their sixth long ball of the night but HU’s confidence wouldn’t be shaken as Richer beat the shot clock buzzer with a long two and then outsprinted everyone on a missed RC free throw for an easy layup to extend the lead back to seven at 56-49 with 2:37 to go.

Rochester still had plenty of fight as they scored the next six points, four on offensive rebounds, to close to within a single point with 13 ticks remaining. While the Foresters may have bent, they didn’t break.

Instead they looked to their rookie point guard Sara Doi to polish things off. The Granger native went 1-for-2 at the charity stripe, came up with a huge defensive stop by way of a steal and then calmly went back to the line where she canned both attempts to put the game out of reach.

Those three points were Doi’s only points of the night but couldn’t have come at a more opportune time to help HU to its fifth straight win.

Fryman topped all scorers with 19 points which included going 9-for-10 from the free throw line. She also ripped down a team-best seven rebounds and swiped a career-high seven steals. Richer added 14 points. Brooke Saylor and Zook finished with ten points apiece.

No one landed in double digits for the hosts. Rio Dudgeon Casey Bowdell posted nine points in the losing effort.

Huntington returns to the friendly confines of Platt Arena this weekend to host the HU Classic where they will face IU Kokomo on Friday at 8:00 p.m.