ROCHESTER ENDS SKID AGAINST STONEY CREEK
Falcons rally to win Crosstown Showdown in OT
The explosion of sound as soon as the locker room door opened was not unexpected, but rather — especially in the minds of those doing the joyful screaming — long overdue.
When Rochester girls basketball coach Bill Thurston opened the door to the locker room under the stands at Oakland University’s O’rena, the screams he was greeted with were joy at the ending of a 13-game skid against rival Stoney Creek, halted with a 34-31 overtime win in Friday’s Crosstown Showdown.
Nine years of frustration came howling out.
“It felt great,” said senior Alaina Webb, who’d never beaten the Cougars in her varsity career, a leader for a program still trying to prove it belongs with the big dogs, even after last year’s OAA White title, and bumping up to the OAA Red.
“Definitely a ‘prove it’ game and showing people that it’s not just a fluke that Rochester is definitely — we’re all hard workers and we’re here to play. And I think that every year when people hear Stony vs. Rochester
they always kind of count Rochester out, and I think we definitely proved them wrong tonight.”
It was a perception that was somewhat fitting, though, considering how the rivalry had gone for the last decade.
While the Cougars (12-6, 5-5 OAA Red) had only been a part of the Crosstown Showdown rotation since 2019, they hadn’t lost to Rochester since a 38-20 setback to the Falcons on Dec. 18, 2012, winning nine straight regular-season meetings, and four more in the postseason over that span.
“I can’t blame Rochester for celebrating like that. You know, it’s a big thing to knock knock off a city rival and especially a team that — we’ve faced them quite a bit in the last few years and they haven’t had much success,” Stoney Creek coach Kellen James said. “We said that going in, like it doesn’t matter, you say ‘throw the records out,’ but it’s records aside, it’s the name. … Brad (Crighton, James’ predecessor) did such a great job of building this program from the very beginning. And then I was lucky enough to take it over for him and kind of work to continue what he started doing and kind of put that imprint. We’ve said we want Stoney Creek to be a team that … teams call us to play. They want to play us because it’s a measuring stick and I think the culture that we have, the kids that buy into the culture, they can — they can feel it.”
While the Cougars have been the big dogs on this particular block for a while, the Falcons (15-3, 8-2 OAA Red) have been building in that same direction since Thurston arrived.
“I think that since the last time we won a district, I think 12 years ago, I think it’s almost been that long since we’ve actually beaten Stoney. And Stoney’s been kind of the talk of the town of either in Rochester when it comes to the Crosstown or when it comes to beating Adams and and Rochester,” Thurston said. “So, it’s so important for these girls to be able to do this, you know, the younger girls, Alice (Max) and Kiely (Robinson) to be able to, to get a win as a sophomore. It just means a lot for them. And it means a lot for the program too. So you know, with where Kellen and Stoney Creek are, you know, that’s where you want to be,
and you want to be up there. And we got there.”
Early on, it looked like the Cougars were going to continue their mastery, leading 11-3 after one quarter, using their pressure defense to offset their height disadvantage.
“Our goal was to pressure them and we wanted to make them have to make decisions. And this is this is one of the better teams that I’ve had in the last few years to run our press. We we’ve been more man-to-man the last few years, but this team, they have a little bit of that dog in them, and we’re just trying to get a little bit more of it out,” James said. “An old coach told me a long time ago — Tim Carruthers from North Farmington — when you play a team with height, running the press is a really good equalizer to height. And it was tonight.”
What the Cougars couldn’t do was turn the Falcons’ miscues into points, or at least enough of them to pull far enough away to keep Rochester from rallying.
The Falcons cut the deficit to three points, 26-23, on a jumper by Webb with 5:10 left. Max had a threepoint opportunity with 46.2 seconds left, but Natalie Rayce got a tie up on the rebound after the freethrow miss, and got herself a one-and-one opportunity with 41.4 left. She made the first to cut it to a two-point deficit, then Robinson put back the missed second free throw to tie it at 28-28, sending it to overtime.
Rayce scored off a steal to start the overtime period to give the Falcons their first lead, then Max scored on a break after she blocked a shot on the other end, then — after Sarah LaPrairie’s 3-pointer cut it to one, 32-31 — got another layup on a steal with 1:10 left in overtime, making it 34-31.
Stoney Creek got off a last-second shot but couldn’t connect.
LaPrairie and Mia Carson had nine points each to lead Stoney Creek, while Max had 11 for Rochester, and Webb had nine.
Stoney Creek hosts Lake Orion on Tuesday, while Rochester is at Birmingham Groves on Monday, before hosting the Dragons on Thursday.