Girls basketball: Rock Falls shoots, swipes past Riverdale

ROCK FALLS – Starting next week, the Rock Falls girls basketball teams enters a crucial point of the season where it will go toe-to-toe with speedy Class 3A and 4A opponents in each of the next six games.

Making sure everything is on the right track going into that challenging schedule came to a head Saturday in a nonconference tilt with Riverdale, and efforts on both sides of the ball got better. The Rockets shot more than 50% from the field and frustrated the Rams to the tune of 35 turnovers in a 57-23 win at Tabor Gynmasium.

The Rams (4-6) made only five shots on 25 attempts; four of them came from 3-point range and just one from elsewhere as the Rockets’ 1-3-1 zone made it very difficult for a jumper or layup to find its way through the hoop.

“I keep stressing with these girls about having a fast start from the opening tip,” Rockets coach Dan Herrera said. “That’s one thing we want to continue to focus on, and make sure that we start fast. Not that it eases up our tension a little bit, but it allows us to have a little more efficient second quarter or second half.”

Having ample practice time has been a big help for the Rockets (6-3) in improving recently, too.

“Our girls have honed in to a lot of things defensively and offensively as well,” Herrera added. “We’re a long ways from where we want to be, but we’re getting there. Slowly but surely.”

Brooke Howard’s steal and layup 45 seconds into the game for the first two points would establish somewhat of a theme for the rest of the way. Howard scored six points off of three of her own steals, Rylee Johnson added four more points of her six total in a similar fashion, and Denali Stonitsch had one such bucket of her own as well. In all, eight Rockets players tallied more than one steal, with Howard’s six and Taylor Reyna’s four leading the team.

Stonitsch’s steal-and-drive capped a 12-3 Rockets run in the second quarter to establish control; the Rams turned the ball over 13 times in the period as the Rockets outscored them 17-3.

“We’ve had an entire week to prepare, and I feel like we’ve been getting so much better over the entire week,” Stonitsch said.

The Rockets led 12-6 at the end of one quarter, but blew it open with the strong second. Jacee Sigel’s 3-pointer from the top of the key with 1:52 to go in the opening half extended the Rockets’ lead to 29-9, which was where it stood at halftime.

Balanced scoring carried the Rockets the rest of the way, and they shot 25-for-48 from the field, led by Claire Bickett’s 12 points, and 10 points apiece from Stonitsch and Mallory Pinske.

“Our shots are starting to fall now that the season’s been going on,” Bickett said. “We’re getting more comfortable and our basketball legs are coming back; and defense, for us, is what’s always kept us in games, so we like to push the ball and score in transition. We have a few more plays in our book, and we’ve been running those well.”

The Rams scored 10 points in the third quarter after having only nine at the half, but were subdued once more in the fourth, with Carrieanne Hungate’s 3-pointer being the only basket over the final 8 minutes. Hungate led the Rams with nine points, and Crystal Craigmiles scored seven and pulled down nine rebounds.

“The second quarter killed us,” Rams coach Jay Hatch said. “We didn’t respond to them playing 1-3-1 at all. You’re not going to be able to beat a good team when you have no offense for an entire quarter. I thought defensively we played hard. A number of their points were off of our offense. Rebounding, I thought we did a pretty good job, and we competed better in the second half. But you just can’t dig yourself that kind of hole.”

Rock Falls will take on United Township next week before playing in the Sterling Shootout with games against Moline, Hononegah, Naperville Central, and Peoria Richwoods, and will have a rematch with the hosts all before Christmas.

“We’re going to have to take advantage of having only one game in the week and get prepared,” Bickett said. “If we take advantage of that, we’ll be ready.”

Both the Rockets and the Rams are at the State Farm Holiday Classic after the Christmas weekend; Rock Falls will look to keep its record above .500, and Riverdale will try to push its record past even.

“We just have to learn from tonight,” Hatch said. “We learned what type of intensity that we have to play with on offense to even get shots against good teams. We did a better job of that in the second half, and now we have to learn to play that speed all of the time. It takes a lot of practice.”