Tribe ends ’05 in style (12/28/05)

FORT RECOVERY — The Indians might have trouble deciding on new year’s resolutions. Based on Tuesday’s game, there isn’t much they need to change.

Four Fort Recovery players scored in double figures, the bench played a bunch of valuable minutes and the defense was suffocating in a 74-40 thumping of the Franklin Monroe Jets.

“There’s a lot of stats that stick out in my head,” said Fort Recovery coach Jeff Roessner, whose squad finished the 2005 portion of its schedule at 6-1. “First and foremost, this was a very good offensive team that we played, and our defense was stifling. I really felt like they could never find a flow ... I’m really proud of the effort we got ...”

Three of the usual suspects — starters Holly Stein, Vicki Roessner and Sara Fortkamp — led the Tribe.

Stein and Roessner were each in double figures by halftime, with Stein leading all scorers as she finished with 25 points. She also posted a game-high five assists and grabbed seven rebounds.

Roessner finished with 14 points, and Fortkamp added 12 points.

Fort Recovery reserves Sam Staugler, Joanna Snyder and Shelly Gehret also gave impressive efforts. Forced into major minutes with Tiff Gaerke picking up three personal fouls in the first quarter and fellow reserve Abby Niekamp out with an injury, the trio came off the bench in a big way.

Staugler, who was on the court for a team-high 28 minutes, joined Stein and Roessner in reaching double digits by halftime. She hit two of her three 3-point tries, totaling 12 points and a team-best eight rebounds.

Snyder, a freshman seeing just her third game of varsity action, had six points and three assists in 15 minutes. She made all of her four free-throw attempts.

“Sam Staugler came in and flat-out lit it up,” said Roessner. “I thought (Snyder) gave us some really, really quality minutes off the bench. Shelly Gehret came in and played her role and did a good job.

“I don’t know what else you can say about (Stein). She does everything. She flat-out goes out there and does everything you could ask for and then some. She’s just an absolute animal out there.”

Franklin Monroe (5-3) was in the game early on, leading 13-12, but then the Tribe defense took over. The Indians went on a 15-2 run spanning the first and second quarters for a 27-15 lead, and scored 24 points in the second quarter alone to push the advantage to 18 points at the half.

The offensive struggles for the Jets just got worse in the second half when Courtney Oswalt went cold. After hitting each of her first five field-goal attempts, Oswalt (18 points, 10 rebounds) missed for the first time midway through the third quarter and went 1-of-6 the rest of the way.

Fort Recovery went on a 14-2 run following Davenport’s first miss, pushing their already sizable lead to 29 points. The advantage just continued to grow as the Indians posted their fourth double-digit win of the season and broke the 70-point barrier for the second time.

Abbey Davenport was the only Franklin Monroe player other than Oswalt to score more than five points, but she shot just 4-of-15 to get her 10.

“That was ugly,” said Franklin Monroe coach Ned Gray. “(We had) too many turnovers. We didn’t come focused and ready to play. You did not see a typical Franklin Monroe team tonight.

“Fort Recovery is a good team, take nothing away from them. They played well tonight, they hustled, they wanted the game more than we did. They out-hustled us tonight. We just didn’t make good decisions. We’ve got some things to work on.”

The combination of poor decision making and Fort Recovery’s in-your-face defense resulted in 28 Jet turnovers compared to just 10 for the host Indians. Franklin Monroe shot just 27 percent from the field.

Junior varsity

A late surge put Franklin Monroe away as the Indians took a 37-23 victory.

Fort Recovery led by just three points at the half and the lead stayed in single digits deep into the final period. But back-to-back 3-pointers by Lauren Wenning and Joanna Snyder finished off the game, putting the Tribe ahead by 11 points with less than three minutes to play.

The Indians made each of their 3-point attempts — Angie Wenning hit the other — in the contest.

Anne Koesters scored a game-high 12 points while grabbing four rebounds. Jill Pottkotter had eight points and five rebounds, and Snyder added seven points and six assists.

Kelsey Wuebker notched four steals, as many as the entire Jet squad.[[In-content Ad]]