Chaffee rallies, pulls past Oak Ridge in chippy interconference matchup

In a big battle of Scott-Mississippi and Mississippi Valley Conference hopefuls, the hosting Chaffee girls basketball team got the best of Oak Ridge with a late comeback to take a 46-43 victory on Thursday night.

Holding a big lead at the half, Chaffee fell into a second-half hole as Oak Ridge escaped its early foul trouble, but the Red Devils rallied back and held on for an impressive win against one of the area’s toughest small schools.

“I thought about girls battled very hard,” Red Devils coach Matthew Schonhoff said. “We played really good defense. We had a lot of girls in foul trouble, but at the end we were able to capitalize.

“Oak Ridge fought hard – [coach] Julie Ward does a great job. We were able to get some conversions when we needed them and we were lucky to pull it out.”

With a chippy start between both sides, foul trouble helped to dictate the first half as Oak Ridge junior forward Reagan Howe was sent to the bench after picking up three early fouls and stayed there for the entirety of the second quarter.

Creating a big hole in the post, Chaffee manipulated this and used the Bluejays’ foul trouble as a way to pull ahead early, holding a 12-7 edge after one and continuing to build on from there.

Mounting a 22-15 lead by the end of the first half, the Red Devils’ commanding start put the heat on Oak Ridge after just 16 minutes.

Using a rapid fastbreak offense to make a swift third-quarter comeback, Howe and her speedy cohorts rallied to a 26-22 lead and finished the third on top at 33-30 after trailing by seven points at the start of the quarter.

On the first possession of the fourth quarter, Chaffee’s Carlyanne Cossou drove inside and drew a foul from Howe – her fifth of the game – and forced the Bluejays to play the final 7:46 without their key force on the interior.

Soon after, the Red Devils regained the lead at 34-33, and their crowd ate it up as Chaffee roared back into a game in which hope seemed to be on the way out just minutes before.

With Kiersten Arnold’s big jumper to go up four points with a minute left, Chaffee solidifed its fourth-quarter lead and paved the way to its 46-43 win to improve to 7-5 on the season.

Chaffee’s biggest individual contribution came from standout freshman Carlyanne Cossou as she dropped 13 points in the win. Following her in double-digit scoring, Zoe Bentley chipped in another 10 points to help push the Red Devils to victory.

Oak Ridge’s Reagan Howe once again led her team in scoring, putting in 14 points across the first and third quarters as she battled the bench in foul trouble. Madalyn Schemel’s 11 points paced her as the Bluejays’ second-leading scorer.

Oak Ridge is just a stepping stone to where the Red Devils want to be. Among a talented Scott-Mississippi Conference, 7-5 is far from where Schonhoff wants his team to be at the end of the season.

It’s easy to get lost in results, but the Chaffee coach stresses the importance of the girls’ efforts no matter what the outcome may be.

Now having won four of their past five games, those results are starting to come for the youthful but talented Red Devils.

“We are still very, very young,” Schonhoff said. “One thing that our girls do is they play extremely hard and they give great effort. Sometimes the ball doesn’t fall our way, but our girls battle. Whatever team that we play, I know that we're gonna give great effort.

“We play in a very tough conference, and we still have some tough conference games to go. The season is still young.”

__CHAFFEE 46, OAK RIDGE 43__

Oak Ridge 7 8 18 10 — 43

Chaffee 12 10 8 16 — 46

Chaffee (46) — Carlyanne Cossou 13, Zoe Bentley 10, Kiersten Arnold 6, Jocelyn Hanlon 6, Malinah Robertson 6, Addison Uhrhan 3, Bailey Robertson 2. FG: 16. (3-pointers: Bentley 1, Cossou 1)

Oak Ridge (43) — Reagan Howe 14, Madalyn Schemel 11, Jayleigh Price 5, Kinsley Bogenpohl 4, MaKayla Rangel 4, Reese Morrison 3, Olivia Schaper 2. FG: 14. (3-pointers: Bogenpohl 1)