Hillsboro Lady Indians win close battle against McClain

GREENFIELD — On Saturday afternoon (Dec. 23), the Hillsboro Lady Indians fended off the McClain Lady Tigers, as it was the away team Lady Indians who broke a tied score with 33 seconds left in regulation which eventually led to the final 44-42 score that gave Hillsboro their fifth win of the season. 

This rivalry game battle saw the fourth quarter begin with a three-point differential where it was Hillsboro leading 34-31 at the beginning of the frame. HHS increased that lead to four points in the early stage of the quarter with a free throw by Kobie Miles, only to see that lead shrink to one point when Luca Matesic knocked down a 3-pointer. 

Hillsboro’s Tylee Davis equaled the previous shot with a 3-pointer of her own, but Matesic put MHS in the lead with two more points with a shot from the field, followed by another basket by Matesic and two free throws by Anna Eikenberry for a 41-38 Lady Tigers lead with 3:15 left in the game. 

Following a timeout by Hillsboro, the Lady Indians scored two consecutive baskets to take back the top spot as Davis and Blake Herdman combined for four points, giving HHS a 42-41 advantage.

McClain tied the score at 42 following a made free throw by Lily Barnes, leaving 1:25 left in the game.

After a traveling call on MHS, plus the two teams combining to miss the next three shot attempts and a jump ball called with 46 seconds remaining in regulation, it was Hillsboro’s Kobie Miles who scored the game-winning basket. 

With 33 seconds left in regulation, Miles sank a jumper from the corner of the court, putting Hillsboro in front 44-42 as that was the final points scored in the game. McClain had one last attempt, but they were unable to score points as the ball was deflected out of bounds by HHS. 

After regaining possession, the Lady Tigers had the ball stolen with 1.2 left on the clock by Peighton Bledsoe as she was fouled, and the game eventually ended with HHS gaining the road Frontier Athletic Conference win. 

“Greenfield is the rivalry game at Hillsboro. It's centuries old, and the girls are always fired up, and McClain’s the same way,” Hillsboro head coach Heather Storer said. “As a coach, no matter what way you think you're going into it, you’ve got to prepare as equals and just know that the other team is going to battle because they want it just as bad as your kids do. Luckily, we came out on the other side. 

“I thought we executed there toward the end and made the right decisions. We hurt them a lot with our defense, which kind of seems to be the common theme here for us. Offensively, we took a few stints of struggling to score again. We’ve just got to be a little bit more consistent executing and scoring when we need. We were able to get a couple of defensive stops there in a row and kind of take control. That's our big thing is control the tempo and keep the game in our favor. I think we did a really good job of that the last couple minutes when it was touch and go.”

Hillsboro was led by Davis with 13 points, making three 3-pointers, one two-point basket and two free throws. 

Herdman totaled 12 points in the Lady Indians’ win, as she collected four two-point baskets and was 4-of-4 from the free-throw line. Kobie Miles was next with nine points, followed by Rylie Scott with six points, Bledsoe with two points and Addyson Miles with two points.

“Rylie Scott came off the bench in the second half, and she's a kid that you don't see a lot of what she does in the book, but man, she's a stat stuffer,” Storer said. “She does a lot of things that the other kids don't do. She's a big rebounder. She's small, but she's able to guard bigs and guards for us. She rebounds exceptionally well. Defensively, she was the game changer in the first half and kind of let us take that lead. 

“She had 14 deflections, and then we had Peighton and Tylee both with double-digit deflections in our way of statting. Just the fact that those three kids were able to do that and apply our defensive pressure was what kept us in control.”

Matesic led MHS with 13 points as she had three 3-pointers and two two-point field goals. Barnes followed with 11 points by making two two-point baskets, a 3-pointer and four free throws. 

The rest of the Lady Tigers’ scoring included Paisley Pryor with six points, Haylee Havens with five points, Kaitlyn Jett with five points and Eikenberry with two points. 

As for the first three frames, Hillsboro led 13-9 after the opening quarter where Davis made a 3-pointer, Scott had two made free throws, Kobie Miles added two made free throws, and with two points each off baskets were Bledsoe, Addyson Miles and Herdman. 

McClain’s nine-point first quarter included five points from Pryor off a basket and three free-throw conversions, two points by Matesic and two points scored by Jett from the free-throw line.

Hillsboro outscored the Lady Tigers, 11-7 in the second quarter, leading by as many as 10 points with 2:53 left in the quarter. The second frame for the Lady Indians had two points scored by Kobie Miles, five points from Davis (including a 3-pointer), and four points from Herdman off a two-point basket and two made free throws. 

MHS in the second frame saw Pryor make a free throw, Havens connect with a free throw, and Barnes scored three points in the frame. 

The Lady Tigers won the third quarter at 15-10, making it a three-point differential on the scoreboard at 34-31, getting to within two points of tying the game at the 5:08 mark of the third frame. 

“I can't be more proud of them because they didn't give up,” McClain head coach Shania Massie. “They kept fighting through the entire game, and they had to fight against some adversity tonight. Sometimes it didn't go our way, and that's just something that we're going to have to work through and finish games out.

“Our goal coming out of halftime was to be down at least by between two and four points going into the fourth quarter. We ended up coming out and were only down two in the fourth quarter, so we met that goal. It brought us back into the game, and it was a good game there at the end.”

MHS opened the third with a 3-pointer from Jett, but HHS came back with 6:42 on the clock with two made free throws by Scott. MHS answered with five straight points – a 3-pointer and two-point basket – from Havens with 5:08 left in the quarter. 

Next came eight straight points from HHS, including two free throws each from Herdman and Kobie Miles, followed by a steal and layup by Scott, plus two more points scored by Herdman for a 34-24 Lady Indians lead at the 2:55 mark of the third. 

MHS came back with two free throws made by Barnes, a 3-pointer from Matesic and a layup also by Barnes for a 6-0 MHS run with 48 seconds left in the third — also completing the scoring for the third — leaving HHS still ahead by three points at 34-31.

The win for HHS improves them to 2-3 in the FAC and 5-6 overall. McClain is now 3-2 in the FAC and 4-5 overall. 

“We had that three-game loss [streak] by a total of eight points and then we won on Wednesday, and then we came back and lost tonight by two points,” Massie said. “It’s something that we just have to keep working on to get them to play for four full quarters. I told him today in the locker room, it's nothing to hang your heads about. 

“We played hard, we didn't give up and it'd be different if they're out there just moping down the court, and that's something they never did. I couldn't be more proud of them for that. Other than that, you know, it’s just going to boil down to four full quarters of basketball.”

Next for Hillsboro is a game on Jan. 4, 2024 on the road at Adena in non-conference action. 

McClain is scheduled to play again on Friday, Dec. 29 at home against the Fairfield Lady Lions. 

BOX SCORE
HHS    13 11 10 10 — 44
MHS    09 07 15 11 — 42

HILLSBORO (44) — P.Bledsoe 1 (0) 0-4 2, K.Miles 2 (0) 5-6 9, R.Scott 1 (0) 4-4 6, T.Davis 1 (3) 2-5 13, A.Miles 1 (0) 0-0 2, B.Herdman 4 (0) 4-5 12. TOTALS: 10 (3) 15-24 44.

MCCLAIN (42) — P.Pryor 1 (0) 4-8 6, L.Matesic 2 (3) 0-0 13, H.Havens 2 (0) 1-1 5, K.Jett 0 (1) 2-2 5, L.Barnes 2 (1) 4-6 11, A.Eikenberry 0 (0) 2-2 2. TOTALS: 7 (5) 13-19 42.