February 1, 2021 at 9:52 a.m.
Lady Hodags fade in second half vs. Mosinee, fall 63-39
Lady Hodags fade in second half vs. Mosinee, fall 63-39
The Hodags went cold, shooting 5 of 19 from the field in the second as Mosinee raced away with a 63-39 win at the Jim Miazga Community Gymnasium.
Rhinelander (11-12, 5-4 Great Northern) was tied with Mosinee at 21 late in the first half, but before the Indians made a 7-2 push to take a 28-23 lead at the break. The lead was still five early in the second half before Rhinelander went on a 6 minute, 53 second scoring drought. Mosinee pushed the lead to 15 in that span and never looked back.
"We really struggled just initiating the offense," Rhinelander coach Ryan Clark said. "It's pretty (evident) that we don't have a ball handler on our team and it doesn't take teams long to realize that and they put the pressure on us. We're good enough to handle it a little bit, but we were just kind of dribbling around. We did a poor job of getting out teammates open. Mosinee really clamped down defensively on us."
Late in the game, as Rhinelander tried to extend its defense to create turnovers, Mosinee got some easy baskets in transition as the pulled away down the stretch. The end result was a 24-point margin of defeat. Rhinelander lost by 25, 59-34, when the teams first met Dec. 11 in Mosinee, but Rhinelander was never in that contest, falling behind 17-2 at the start.
"As the second half wore on they got some easy ones," Clark said. "Some of it, we were down 14 with like 6:40 to go and I told them we're going to have to extend a little bit here and have a little more risk vs. reward. We had to go for some steals and they broke our pressure pretty well."
Mosinee, the top defensive team in the GNC, put the clamps on Rebecca Lawrence and the Hodag offense. Lawrence, who came in averaging 23 points per game, was held to 15 on 7 of 12 shooting. Ava Lamers had seven for Rhinelander, which had struggled all season to find a consistent second and/or third scorer to take some of the pressure off of Lawrence.
"The inability for us to have another scorer outside Rebecca, I was hoping to maybe get that corrected by the end of the season, but tonight was a no-go," Clark said. "It's hard to win that way. It's hard to win with one scorer."
The Hodags committed 24 turnovers in the loss.
Kate Fitzgerald paced three Mosinee players in double digits with 17 points, Jenna Placek added 13 and Claire Selenske had 10 as Mosinee shot 46% (25 of 54) from the field and held a 38-23 edge on the glass. Mosinee (14-6, 8-1 Great Northern) clinched the conference title outright with the victory.
The regional seeding meeting was set to take place Sunday night. Prior to the meeting Clark said the possibility existed for Rhinelander to see Mosinee down the line in the WIAA tournament, assuming the Hodags get past their first-round contest.
"We'll watch the film and go back at it, but we have some limitations that I'm going to have to do a better job of figuring out how to overcome them," he said.
Rhinelander closes out the regular season Friday night at Medford.
Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].
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