By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
With the Aurora girls basketball team looking to finish an unbeaten conference run and claim the Big 8 championship outright, host Nevada played the spoiler on Monday night––and set the Tigers up to claim a share of the conference title.
Nevada (14-7, 6-1) limited the visitors to just three field goals in the first half and only one in the fourth quarter in earning a 32-30 victory that snapped Aurora’s 13-game winning streak and dropped the Houn’ Dawgs to 21-4 overall and 7-1 in Big 8 play.
If the Tigers win at Mt. Vernon on Thursday night, they’ll share the conference crown with Aurora.
“Defense,” Nevada coach Blake Howarth said. “Our defense was big for us tonight. Really proud of how Caylee Holcomb, our senior team captain, face guarded the (Kylee) Cole girl and we did a great job with that. In the first half Cole knocked down some shots and in the second half we really told them Caylee’s going to face guard but we’ve got to make somebody else beat us. We’ve got to be in a better position to help out Caylee and not allow the Cole girl to get downhill because that’s what she was starting to do. It was a team effort on the defensive end, knowing where everybody’s at and closing back out to their person.”
Nevada, winners of seven straight, led 6-2 after a quarter and 9-2 early in the second following a 3-pointer by Cora Braden. Aurora scored the next 11 points and led 15-12 at halftime after Cole scored 9 of her game-high 18 points in the second quarter.
Nevada’s Anna Swarnes and Halle Richmond each made 3-pointers early in the third, and a layup by Swarnes made it 20-17. Again the Houn’ Dawgs went on a run, this time scoring 10 straight to lead 27-20 with 1:41 left in the quarter after a basket by Jaysa Ernest. Nevada’s Grace Andersen converted a 3-point play to end the run and sent the teams into the fourth quarter with Aurora leading by 4.
CLICK HERE FOR PHOTOS OF THE GAME
Points were again at a premium in the final period. Nevada cut it to 1 on a 3-pointer by Holcomb with 4:31 remaining––the first points of the fourth quarter––and Aurora answered with an offensive rebound and score by Cole to make it 29-26. Nevada’s Swarnes scored a layup with 2:48 left to get it back to 1, and then Aurora’s Ernest made a free throw with 1:10 left that gave the visitors a 30-28 lead.
Andersen then nailed a deep 3-pointer with 58 seconds on the clock to give Nevada a lead. Aurora turned it over on a travel about 20 seconds later. Andersen added a free throw with 18 seconds left.
Aurora got off a shot in the final seconds but missed; the Houn’ Dawgs grabbed the rebound and were fouled with less than a second remaining. After missing the first, they intentionally missed the second but couldn’t get off a clean put-back before the buzzer.
“I saw us get over-rotated on our defense like we’ve talked about throughout the year, people staying within their roles,” Aurora coach Jason Cole said. “I saw us rotating out of that and giving them too many open looks. We should be able to win a ballgame when we give up 32 points but in all reality we should not give up those kind of points. Hats off to them for knocking down shots but we gave up way too many open looks for what we do within our program.”
“We need seniors and we need upperclassmen to play like upperclassmen,” Cole said. “Take care of the ball and battle through. They were laying on us and doing some things there and we needed to toughen up and go ahead and play and we didn’t. Hats off to them again. They did what they needed to do. They did what the officiating was allowing them to do and it took us awhile to adjust to that. We’ve got to go back to the things we talked about and keep working moving forward.”
Aurora wraps up the regular season against Doniphan on Saturday ahead of Class 4 District 12 action next week.
Nevada, after concluding at Mt. Vernon on Thursday, takes on Center in Class 4 District 13 next Tuesday.
“I’m really proud of this group,” Howarth said. “We’ve had to battle some adversity early on in January and our girls have done a good job of continuing to be coachable, weathering the storm and continuing to battle through that adversity. Really proud of them and how we’re playing right now in the month of February.”
Nevada was led in scoring by Richmond’s 9 points. Swarnes and Andersen each scored 7, Cora Braden had 6 and Holcomb had 3. Cole led Aurora with 18, Ernest scored 5, Alyssa Burch scored 4, Nadia Davis scored 2 and Brooke Blevins scored 1.
