St. Henry’s Alexis Buschur scores off a turnover to help erase a halftime deficit and fuel a 29-point comeback in the second half. (Press Pros Feature Photos by Julie Wright)
St. Henry’s girls borrowed a vintage page from the Minster playbook, turning repeated turnovers into a second half comeback to win 43-35 on the road.
Minster, OH – It wasn’t Mike Wiss’s favorite post-game explanation of what he and about two hundred others had just witnessed.
That being, he (and they) saw his Minster girls flummox a 23-14 halftime lead, lose their way due to turnovers and lack of a dependable scoring threat in the second half, and ultimately succumb to undefeated St. Henry (7-0), 43-35, in Thursday MAC girls basketball.
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“Pressure does things in the game of basketball,” he said quietly. “Both of these teams strive to put pressure on the basketball, making things happen…creating situations…and not allow the other team to do what they want to do. Did our kids play hard tonight? Yeah. But we didn’t handle their pressure, or value our possessions.”
Ironically, it was St. Henry who didn’t handle Minster’s pressure in the first half, falling behind early in the first quarter, 13-6, then watched the Wildcats extend that lead in the second quarter off the impact of a pair of three-point shots from Kali Schmiesing….23-14 at halftime.
“I was pleased with how we came out in the first half, how we came back from the Loramie game on Saturday,” added Wiss. “I was super proud of them, and then [St. Henry] scored the first six points of the third quarter, off three turnovers…breakaways…and from that point they became the aggressor.”
St. Henrys Morgan Baumer attacks the rim to score two of her team-high 9 points.
St. Henry coach Nate Uhlenhake would later refer to it as having regrouped at halftime…perhaps visualizing the manner in which they played previously to win their first six games.
St. Henry did turn Minster in the open court on three consecutive possessions to start the half, converted on those turnovers, and thus began the slow drip of a game getting away – the flummox.
Capitalizing on a pair of quick buckets from Alexis Buschur, the Redskins outscored Minster 13-5 for the quarter, and were it not for a pair of threes from Kali Schmiesing and teammate Sophia Dirksen, they might have been skunked. Still, Minster held a three-point lead, 30-27, to begin the fourth quarter.
The turnovers were beginning to pile up on Minster, and St.Henry’s pressure defense kept their backcourt from feeding the ball to the post…so far from the rim they couldn’t get a high-percentage shot. Minster misfired on a series of three-point shots, while St. Henry kept chipping away at the other end. At 5:15 of the fourth quarter the Redskins finally tied the score at 31-31.
Minster came back to retake the lead on a bucket by Addy Inskeep, but that two-point lead would last all of 74 seconds. Once again, off a turnover, St. Henry got to the rim scored, converted a free throw, and took the lead for good.
“Their pressure got to us in the first half and things didn’t go our way for a while,” said Uhlenhake, afterwards. “We couldn’t get into our half-court offense. I think we only had four field goals, and we made enough from the foul line to hang in there.
St. Henry’s defense became the issue, holding Minster to just 12 points in the second half.
“But we regrouped at halftime and came out to compete and do the things we needed to run our offense. We had a little more fire, pressured them more, and that set the tone for the second half.”
Still, down just four, Minster cut it to two before a spate of turnovers, resembling the start of the third quarter, struck again, allowing St. Henry a pair of easy buckets, pushing the lead to 43-35, and a satisfying end to an impressive comeback – a 29-12 turnaround over the final sixteen minutes!
Impressively, St. Henry had seven different players score, highlighted by Alexis Buschur and Morgan Baumer with 9 points each. Leah Lefeld had 8, Lauren Thieman had 6, Molly Wendel had 5 and Ava Homan added 4. St. Henry finished by shooting 39% from the floor and hit 12 of 20 from the foul line.
Minster nearly duplicated those numbers, led by Kali Schmiesing’s 9 points. Reece Albers had 8, Abriana Wuebker had 4, Addy Inskeep had 5, and four others combined for 9 points to conclude the Minster scoring. But 28 turnovers turned out to be their undoing, simply too much to overcome without offense in the game’s final five minutes.
St. Henry forced 28 turnovers for the game, fueling a 29-12 turnaround in the second half.
St. Henry improved to 7-0, Minster dropped to 5-2, and Nate Uhlenhake couldn’t make the point enough over how proud he was of his team’s effort – the comeback!
“Our girls work their butts off all year long to be in position to make plays when it matters most,” he added. “I told them inside that I was so proud of them for the way they handled the adversity they faced. And credit to Minster, they’re a really good team, they’ve been a dominant power in the MAC for a long time and they kind of got us out of our stuff [in the first half]. I was super proud of them being able to regroup and come back like that.”
Something on which Wiss and the Wildcats usually feast – points off turnovers – had come back to haunt.
The tables turned.
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