Press pushes Shawano into blowout loss

The Shawano girls basketball team struggled to take control of the tempo of Thursday’s WIAA Division 2 regional semifinal road game in New London.

The Bulldogs, who unleashed a man-to-man, full-court press, forced the Hawks to push the ball up the court too fast, forcing turnovers and missed shots, and the game was never in doubt as New London ran away with the 61-29 victory.

“They’ve never been in this spot before, so you’ve got to use it as a learning experience, and you’ve got to slow down,” Shawano head coach Ryan Koenig said. “We just couldn’t slow down. Once you break it, you’ve got to slow down, and we just kept trying to go as hard as we could to the basket or the sideline, and bad things happen when you do that.”

Shawano, which lost Kennedy Klemens to a knee injury just over a minute into the game, turned the ball over on its first four possessions. New London’s Leah Porath scored the first six points of the game.

Sophomore Hailey Buschman got the Hawks on the board with a free throw. Another Buschman free throw one minute later cut the deficit to six before Tori DePerry got a layup to make the score 8-4.

The Bulldogs went on a 13-0 run over the span of 4 minutes and 30 seconds, including 10 points from Porath, who scored a game-high 22 points.

“She’s a scorer,” New London head coach Troy Krause said. “That’s what she does. That sounds simple, but she comes off of screens looking to shoot.”

The Hawks and Bulldogs faced off twice in the last month of the regular season. New London won both contests by an average of 9.5 points.

The Bulldogs (14-9, 10-4 Bay Conference) built its lead to 33 points, 41-8, at the break.

“That whole first half, for 18 minutes, I didn’t recognize that team out there, and that’s unfortunate in this situation,” Koenig said. “It does happen in tournament games, and it’s something to build on.”

Krause still found something wrong with his squad’s first-half effort.

“We fouled too much. I think Shawano had eight points at half; six were from the free-throw line,” Krause said. “It slows down the pace of the game. It gets us in foul trouble.”

After Kali Rohan hit a 3 to open the second half, Shawano’s Brandi Gueths scored five consecutive points to bring the Hawks back within 30, but that is as close as they could get.

Sophomore forward Tori DePerry re-injured her left ankle with just under 15 minutes left in the game and Shawano trailing by 32. She did not return.

The Hawks (10-14, 5-9 Bay) have just one senior on the roster, Tatum DePerry, who posted five points and four rebounds in the loss. Buschman had a team-high six points and four rebounds, while Gueths finished with five points and five rebounds.

For everyone except Gueths, it was the first road playoff game of their career.

“We’ve got two more years with the sophomores and another year with the junior class, and we have a freshman on the team, so we’re young,” Koenig said. “A lot of learning hopefully happened tonight.”

Shawano (29)

Williams 0 1-2 1; Buschman 2 2-5 6; To. DePerry 1 0-0 2; Ta. DePerry 1 3-3 5; Ward 0 1-2 1; Hansen 0 1-2 1; Wendorff 0 3-4 3; Wynos 2 0-0 4; Gueths 2 0-0 5; Habeck 0 1-2 1.

New London (61)

Christian 3 2-2 10; Halvorsen 1 0-0 2; Madsen 1 0-0 2; Besaw 5 1-2 14; Rohan 3 0-0 6; Winkler 1 0-0 3; Porath 10 2-2 22; Pankow 1 0-0 2.

Shawano 8 21 — 29

New London 41 20 — 61