Trojans defeat Larned, Lyons

Rebecca Kaufman shoots for three at Larned Friday. She scored a career-high nine points in Hillsboro?s 42-32 win over the Indians, giving the Trojans a 6-1 record.The Hillsboro girls opened 2016 with a pair of less-than-stellar road wins over teams with losing records.

Hillsboro, now 6-1 for the season, pulled a win out of the fire in the final quarter at Larned on Friday after avenging their only loss of the season Tuesday with an up-and-down performance at Lyons.

Larned?The Trojans played below their capabilities for three quarters, but pulled together for an 11-1 fourth quarter that vaulted them past the Indians, 42-32.

Hillsboro started well, building a 10-4 lead through one quarter by limiting the home team to 2-for-14 shooting. But the Indians narrowed the deficit to 19-18 by halftime, thanks in part to 3-for-11 shooting and eight turn?overs by the Trojans.

Larned took its first lead at 20-19 as the third quarter began, but with the game tied at 23 with 5:35 left in the quarter, Hillsboro regained the advantage with a 6-0 run when Rebecca Kaufman hit two jumpers and Callie Linnens scored in the paint.

Larned made one last surge to tie the game at 31 as the third quarter ended.

The Indians took the lead again with a free throw at the 7:07 mark of the fourth quarter, but it was the last point they would score the rest of the game.

The Trojans, meanwhile, got seven points from Alex Ratzlaff down the stretch while she and her teammates limited Larned to 0-for-12 shooting for the quarter.

?We went with a lot of different lineups, and I felt like there at the end we had girls flying around a little bit,? coach Nathan Hiebert said. ?We switched defenses back to one we had tried before. It didn?t work as well then, but thankfully this time it did work a bit better.?

Ratzlaff finished with 17 points and 10 rebounds. Rebecca Kaufman added a career-high nine points and Lin?nens pulled down 10 rebounds to aid the cause.

Neither team shined offensively; Hillsboro made 31 percent of its shots (16-52) while Larned converted 26 percent (14-54). The Trojans enjoyed a 49-21 advantage in rebounding.

Lyons?On a night when team leader Alex Ratzlaff was not quite on her game, the Trojans compensated with key contributions from several of her teammates.

Callie Linnens scored a career-high 14 points to lead the team to a 53-46 victory.

?They don?t have a lot of size inside, so she was very aggressive,? coach Nathan Hiebert said of his 5-foot-10 junior. ?She did a really nice job of getting herself in good positions and taking high-quality shots.?

Hillsboro got off to a rough start, committing nine turnovers and managing only one field goal through the first 5:32 of the game. But when Linnens scored her first bucket of the night deep in the post, the Trojans tied the game at 7-7 at the 2:28 mark.

Four more unanswered points at the free-throw line lifted Hills?boro to an 11-7 lead at the first break?despite making only two of 10 shots from the floor. The Trojans did cash in on seven of 10 charity opportunities.

?The first quarter we played like it was the first game after Christmas, and we played like the first time we played them?we were throwing up quick shots, defensively we were letting them penetrate and we were fouling.

?We told the girls we just have to contain the basketball defensively, and so (Lyons) started taking tough?er shots.?

By halftime, Hillsboro had bumped the lead to 23-16 with Linnens contributing nine of those points. Ratz?laff, who was averaging 19 points, managed only four before intermission.

Hillsboro played its best ball in the third quarter, stretching the lead to 37-24 when Sienna Kaufman scored on a put-back with 46 seconds left in the period.

But Lyons did not fold. Scoring mostly from the free-throw line through the first two minutes, the Lions? sharpshooting guards began hitting their three-pointers?four in the final 4:20? narrowing the lead to 50-46 with 28 seconds to play.

Fittingly, Linnens, who sat out the third quarter because of foul trouble, iced the win with a pair of free throws with 3.4 seconds left.

Ratzlaff finished with 10 points and Rebecca Kauf?man and Paige Proffitt each scored a season-high six.

Coming?The Trojans were schedule to host Smoky Valley (2-0, 2-4) on Tuesday, then will welcome Halstead (0-2, 2-5) to Brown Gymnasium on Friday with a 6 p.m. tip-off.

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