Lady Hodags roll to fourth straight win

The Rhinelander High School girls basketball team pulled away from Antigo Friday night as it continued a successful home stand.

Aubryn Clark scored 24 points and Vivian Lamers added a career-high 17 as the Hodags raced past the Red Robins 75-35 at the Jim Miazga Community Gymnasium.

It was the fourth straight win for Rhinelander (5-1, 2-0 Great Northern), all at home, as the Hodags are in the midst of a stretch of five consecutive home games. The Hodags proved simply too much for a young Antigo team (1-3, 0-2 Great Northern) which committed 26 fouls and 44 turnovers in the contest. That created a lot of whistles and kept the Hodags from getting into much rhythm offensively. Rhinelander won handily despite shooting under 35% (24 of 69) from the field in the contest.

“It was just a lot of stoppage of play. We didn’t have much flow for most of the game,” Hodag coach Ryan Clark said. “I mean, just kind of an ugly game, but I’d rather be on that end than the other end. We just could never hit the flow going. We never really got there’s always a stop into play within probably 20 to 30 seconds.” 

The Hodags never trailed in the contest — marking the third time during their four-game winning streak that they led wire-to-wire. Rhinelander used a 15-2 run late in the first half to finally create some separation and took a 43-20 lead to the break. 

A 9-2 run early in the second pushed the lead to 30 points and the Hodags cruised the rest of the way. 

    Rhinelander’s Dawsyn Barkus attempts a 3 during the first half of a GNC girls’ basketball game against Antigo at the Jim Miazga Community Gymnasium Friday, Dec. 6. (Bob Mainhardt for the River News)
  

Coming off a contest where Aubryn Clark scored a school-record 43 in an overtime victory over Medford last Tuesday, coach Clark said he sought more balance from the Hodags on Friday. In addition to Lamers’s 17, seniors Kelsey Winter and Dawsyn Barkus each scored eight in the winning effort an Rhinelander hit 10 3-pointers in the contest, their most season a season-opening win at Crandon (11).

“Obviously, Aub’s going to score points, but our goal isn’t for Aub to score 40 points,” coach Clark said. “It has to be a really balanced basketball team. I thought Vivian plays so hard, she started looking for a shot a little bit more. She can score it. She’s just got to get little confidence and find her strength a little bit. I thought Kelsey was very consistent and Dawsyn hit a couple of big 3s as well.”

The Hodags pressure flummoxed an Antigo team that featured three freshmen in the starting lineup. In the first half alone the Robins had 10 more turnovers (26) than shot attempts (16). But a number of those turnovers were of the dead-ball variety. Rhinelander struggled to get live-ball turnovers and create chances to score in transition. 

“We weren’t causing any live ball turnovers, but we’d have a few knocked out of bounds or a jump ball,” coach Clark said. “So we went to more of our 1-2-2 (press) just let them get it in and see if they bring it up the court a little bit and see if we could just kind of get — even if we don’t get a turnover — just some flow to it.”

Tristin Arlen, the top rebounder in the GNC during the 2023-24 season, had 11 points and 7 rebounds in the loss for Antigo and the Hodags won the rebounding battle 38-31.

Rhinelander led 66-29 with about seven minutes to play when it turned the game over to its reserves. Senior Reese Gehrig scored five points late in the going, including a 3 that triggered the running-clock rule as the Hodags stretched the lead to more than 40 points, up 73-32 with 4:05 remaining.

“Reese and McKenna (Sternitzky) and Ava (Kurilla), those three seniors that work hard every day in practice, without complaining,” coach Clark said. “I really proud of them, and I tell them they played smart … That what makes us special. Everyone cheers for each other and those kids have earned that opportunity.”

The Hodags will close out their home stand against Northland Pines this Friday night. With a week between games, Rhinelander will have its longest stretch of practice since the opening week of the season. Coach Clark said the Hodags will use the time to try to diversify the offense even more.

“Our team, the more we can get kids contributing the tougher we’ll be,” he said. “Otherwise, (opponents will) just put two kids on Aubryn. The next couple of games there will be in the great opportunity for everyone to just a little more confident, learn to play off of Aubryn a little bit.”

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].