Shelbyville Lady Golden Bears Basketball

By Ross Flint Staff writer Published: Monday, January 13, 2014 8:05 AM US/eastern Prior to the final five minutes, 23 seconds of the game, Shelbyville senior Riley Achenbach had missed her first six 3-pointers. It was the two big ones in the closing minutes that mattered, though. Both helped Shelbyville to a thrilling 42-40 comeback win over Hoosier Heritage Conference rival Yorktown Saturday afternoon at William L. Garrett Gymnasium. Achenbach, who shot 40 percent from the field for the game but couldn’t find her range before the final quarter, drilled a 3-pointer with nine seconds remaining to give the Golden Bears (5-9 overall, 1-3 HHC) their first lead since the second quarter. Yorktown senior Tyann Kobza missed a 3 with two seconds left, and the Golden Bears came up with the rebound and ran out the clock. * “This team is just continuing to grow,” said Shelbyville coach Scott Larrabee. “I am so proud of our mental toughness. We get down in that fourth quarter and we just kind of gritted our teeth, fought through adversity, created some turnovers, got some baskets, and all of a sudden, the pressure’s on.” In a game that Yorktown (7-3, 1-2 HHC) led most of the way, Shelbyville found itself down 35-26 with 5:48 remaining in the fourth quarter. From there, the Golden Bears went on a 7-0 run to cut the deficit to two. Achenbach started it with her first 3-pointer of the game with 5:23 left. Then freshman Alexis Tackett brought the Golden Bears to within two with a baseline jumper and layup. After junior Emma McCord’s putback on her own miss gave the Tigers a 37-33 lead, Shelbyville tied the game. Achenbach scored on a layup, and Tackett scored after the Golden Bears stole the ball with 1:46 left. “We just kind of chipped away,” Larrabee said. “We finally started getting out on (Katie Wolfert). Defensively, we forced them to get a little stagnant offensively. They were a little more passive than they had been in the quarter. When it got closer, we put our foot on the accelerator and they were still in a little bit of a passive mode.” Wolfert, who hit three 3-pointers in the third quarter to help the Tigers pull away for an eight-point lead entering the fourth, made 1-of-2 free throws to make it 38-37, but Tackett scored from the baseline with 37 seconds left. Wolfert made a pair of free throws 10 seconds later, setting up Achenbach’s heroics. “We’ve worked on a lot of situations, down so many points, so many minutes,” Larrabee said. “It’s a culmination of this season. Our goal is to be the best team we can at the end of the season. We’re improving. We are absolutely improving. To beat a veteran team like Yorktown, in our conference, is a huge win in our program.” Shelbyville put itself in that position to win with a first half that saw neither team shoot the ball particularly well (30 percent for both teams), but the Golden Bears were down just one, 31-30. “We gave them a couple easy opportunities in the first half that we wanted to correct,” Larrabee said. “We gave a couple putback layups and cuts. Basketball is a game of mental toughness. Only a few stoppages of play, and you’ve got to fight through it.”