Rochester pulls upset of Lake Orion
BY DAN STICKRADT
SENIOR EDITOR
dan.stickradt@northoaklandsports.com
ROCHESTER HILLS — Adam Sheldon received some great news Saturday afternoon. He is now the proud father of a bouncing, baby boy.
The Rochester girls basketball coach also received some additional good news Monday night: He coached his first district win in his third season with the Falcons.
Rochester pulled the first local upset of the Class A postseason, opening up district play with a 39-34 upset of visiting Lake Orion to advance to the Wednesday’s 7 p.m. district semifinals against Oxford, also at Rochester. Rochester Stoney Creek and Rochester Adams will play in the first district semifinal at 5 p.m.
“Saturday was a great day for my family, and now we won the first district game in (Four years),” said Sheldon. “I told the girls that we have to keep on winning, so my wife and my son can se us play again. She gets out of the hospital (Tuesday).”
After reaching the state quarterfinals in 2007, the Falcons have lost in the district semifinals the past four seasons. Rochester, which won only three games last season, improved to 8-13 overall with several close games this season to boot.
“I think we have improved a ton since last year,” admitted Sheldon. “I think the effort has been there and now we are starting to see some progress with some wins. We started 2-8, but we had losses to Clarkston, Stoney Creek, (Birmingham) Marian and some good teams. We learned a lot from those games. We were 5-5 the second half of the season and we lost 2-3 games by just a possession.”
Not normally a good outside shooting team this season, Rochester tied a season-high with six 3-pointers, good for 18 of its 39 points, and limited Lake Orion to just one field goal over the first 12 minutes of the game.
In fact, when senior forward Marissa Secontine hit a jumper with 4:10 left in the second quarter, it was the first made bucket for the Dragons on the night, as they were only able to make five free throws at that point. Secontine, Lake Orion’s leading scorer this season, was held to 10 points.
Aubrey Konal scored a game-high 16 points to lead Rochester, which finished 14-for-42 from the floor (33 percent) and out-rebounded the taller Dragons, 32-28. Junior Stephanie Vonbehren added seven points and four steals for the Falcons.
Sophomore Nicole Krier led Lake Orion with 12 points and nine rebounds, while freshman Hannah Hamay scored seven and senior Laura Turnbull collected seven rebounds for the Dragons.
“It was one of those nights for us. We were down 10-3 at the end of the first quarter and it took forever for us to make a basket,” admitted Lake Orion coach Steve Roberts. “We played better in the second half, but we couldn’t get over the hump.
“I am still pleased with how we kept battling out there. We did the whole season,” continued Roberts. “This team faced a ton of adversity with all of the injuries to some of our key players. We had four seniors go down. We could have easily been 7-14 instead of 14-7, but the girls kept working and we won a lot of close games and lost a couple of close game. We were competitive.”
Lake Orion (14-7) still struggled from the floor the whole night against the Falcons’ pesky defense, going 10-for-47 (21.3 percent). The Dragons fell behind 10-3 after the first quarter and never recovered.
Rochester led 15-11 at the half and 25-21 through three quarters of play. The Falcons held a 14-13 edge in the fourth quarter to close out the upset.
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