After a last-second loss against Kaneland this past week, the Rochelle Hub varsity basketball team looked to restart its winning streak with a nonconference matchup against Rock Falls on Tuesday.
This item is available in full to subscribers.
To continue reading, you will need to either log in to your subscriber account, below, or purchase a new subscription.
Please log in to continue |
ROCK FALLS — After a last-second loss against Kaneland this past week, the Rochelle Hub varsity basketball team looked to restart its winning streak with a nonconference matchup against Rock Falls on Tuesday.
Turnovers doomed the Hubs during last week’s loss to the Knights, but Rochelle turned the tables against the Rockets on Tuesday, forcing 18 steals and scoring 24 points off Rock Falls turnovers. Behind a dominant first quarter in which the Hubs outscored the Rockets 24-9, Rochelle cruised over Rock Falls 76-59.
“It definitely helped us a lot to win this game,” senior Noah Brown said. “We all accepted the loss against Kaneland and we needed to get back on our streak. We have to keep our tempo and we can’t be turning the ball over. Our turnover count was a lot higher than usual against Kaneland and they were scoring a lot of their points off of those turnovers. We can’t be turning the ball over that much moving forward.”
Brown led the Hubs (12-9, 6-2 Interstate 8) with 16 points while adding a team-high five steals on Tuesday. Senior Tanner Lager scored 12 points and senior Adam Kemp finished with 11 points, nine rebounds and seven assists. Senior Ryan Simmons recorded eight points, eight assists and 10 rebounds in the victory. The Hubs led Rock Falls 43-21 at halftime and outpaced the Rockets 21-6 in transition scoring for the game.
“We really pushed the tempo and we knew they had two really good shooters so we didn’t want them to get many shots,” Brown said. “We didn’t want them to get clean looks and I thought we did that really well. We had the mindset that we needed to win this game and we didn’t want to have another letdown like we had against Kaneland. We don’t want to lose by a buzzer-beater or have that feeling ever again.”
Rochelle dominated down low, outscoring the Rockets 50-20 on points in the paint and outrebounding Rock Falls 43-29. Seniors Cooper Hasz and Zach Sanford each scored seven points in the victory, with Hasz totaling six rebounds and three steals. Junior Raul Aguirre and sophomore Eli Luxton each added six points.
