Lady Hodags can’t overcome Seubert, SPASH in road contest

An off night offensively and a talented Stevens Point freshman proved to be too much for the Rhinelander High School girls’ basketball team to overcome on Tuesday night.

Jada Seubert had 24 points as the Panthers knocked off the Hodags 57-47 in Stevens Point. 

Lily Treder scored a game-high 26-points for the Hodags (11-5, 6-1 Great Northern) and knocked down five triples, but Rhinelander made only 6 of 30 from beyond the arc as a team and shot 36.5% from the field overall. 

“We played just good enough defensively to keep ourselves in the game, but we missed a lot of shots and we weren’t executing much,” Hodag coach Ryan Clark said. “I don’t think we came in with a battle mentality. I was expecting our group to be a little more gritty, feisty and really get after it. I thought we had a chance to knock these guys off. I thought Stevens Point hit us in the mouth and they were just the tougher team.”

Seubert had a personal 9-0 run that put the Panthers (11-6, 6-0 Wisconsin Valley) up 13-6 less than six minutes into the opening half and the Hodags struggled to play catch-up the rest of the way. Fifteen of Seubert’s points came in the first half as SPASH took a 26-17 lead to the break.

“She hurt us. They run a lot of good screens for her,” coach Clark said. “We didn’t execute off of that very well. She’s a tough player. She can shoot it, she gets to the rim, she defends well. She’s a really good freshman.”

The Panthers stretched the lead to as many as 15 on two separate occasions in the second half before the Hodags made a late run. Aubryn Clark hit a pair of pull-up jumpers and Morgan Van Zile added a driving layup to get Rhinelander with in 53-47 with 42 seconds remaining, but Seubert hit two free throws on the other end and, following a missed Hodag shot, Jacinta Zdroik added a pair of free throws with 10.9 seconds left to salt the game away.

“The second half they kind of beat us a little more, using their two bigs inside. They were posting strong, looking to get it inside. We’d hit a 3 and they’d hit a 2. That hurt us,” coach Clark said. “They couldn’t put us away. We kind of hung around but we never could establish ourselves and make amends of this game at all.”

Aubryn Clark, the Hodags’ leading scorer, was frustrated offensively most of the night. She was limited to six points on 3 of 23 shooting and missed all 13 of her attempts from beyond the arc. Overall, coach Clark said Stevens Point’s mix of defenses kept his team off balance much of the night.

“Against the 1-3-1 I thought we did OK. We got a lot of open 3s, just didn’t hit any,” he said. “The man-to-man we didn’t execute any motion offense. We were just kind of stagnant and just struggled to execute our movement against a zone and, when they flipped to a man we were kind of still in zone and holding spots and not really executing screens.”

Kelsey Winter had eight points for Rhinelander and pulled down a season-high 14 rebounds. 

The Panthers were not overly efficient on offense either, shooting 37.5% from the field and 2 of 15 from deep. Lindsey Weiler added a double-double for SPASH with 14 points and 11 rebounds. 

The Hodags return home to face Northland Pines this evening and then will take on Wausau East in a non-conference makeup game this coming Monday at the Jim Miazga Community Gymnasium.

Jeremy Mayo may be reached at [email protected].