Jennifer Dowden’s 19 points weren’t enough Thursday as the Bonduel High School girls basketball team lost 48-39 to Auburndale in a WIAA Division 4 sectional semifinal at Wausau West High School.
Auburndale scored the first six points on its way to a 13-3 first quarter lead. The Bears responded, finally getting some shots to drop and pulling to within 13-11 by the end of the quarter.
Bonduel would pull to within 18-17 by halftime, but Auburndale’s 12-6 run in the third quarter took the Bears out of their game plan.
“They pushed us into a game we didn’t like,” Bonduel coach Missy Dowden said. “We wanted to run our offense and then play good defense. We struggled right in the beginning on our defense. And then on offense, we didn’t work the ball because they had shoved us into such a frenzy in the first quarter.”
Jennifer Dowden, a 6-foot junior forward who scored 10 of her 19 points in the first half, had two 3-point plays in the Bears’ first-quarter rally. She finished the game with eight rebounds, four assists and two blocks.
Alexa Reinke added 10 points, five coming in the fourth quarter.
Adding to the Bears’ problems on offense was an injury to Deanna Zernicke, a 5-6 junior perimeter shooter. Zernicke suffered a dislocated shoulder in the second quarter. She returned in the second half, but could not shoot from outside like she had all season.
“They’re so used to passing the ball around and having Deanna take a shot,” Missy Dowden said. “She could not get the ball up there. If it was a 15-foot shot or shorter, she had the arm for it.”
Auburndale, meanwhile, made most of its points inside the paint. Shannon Yahnke, a junior forward, led the Apaches with 14 points.
“She holds her space well,” Dowden said. “When she boxes out she takes up some room and she controls an area. So when she calls for the ball, she has a nice wingspan to hold everybody back.
While Auburndale finished with only a 24-20 edge in rebounding, the early edge hurt.
“We were not hitting the boards. We were getting pushed underneath,” Dowden said. “I told the girls we need to hit the weight room over the summer. You can’t take this lightly. We’ve got to have every rebound, and every rebound counts.”
Auburndale made 12 of its 17 free-throw attempts in the fourth quarter.
Bonduel plans to use the loss as a learning experience, Dowden said.
“They’re coming out here so sad right now,” she said, “but we had a great year. We wanted to win conference — we had a share of it. We wanted to get to regionals and take care of Oconto — we got it. We got to this step and fell a little short of our goal.”
The Bears lose only two seniors, Morgan Sorenson and Courtney Schmidt.
“We have 32 girls in the Bonduel program that want those two spots,” Dowden said.
Bonduel (39)
Dowden 8 2-4 19, Reinke 4 0-1 10, Weier 3 1-2 7, Sorenson 1 0-0 3
Auburndale (48)
Kundinger 2 4-4 9, Linzmeier 3 0-0 6, Gotz 3 3-6 9, Richardson 4 0-0 8, Yahnke 3 8-12 14, Karl 0 2-3 2
Bonduel 11 6 6 16 — 39
Auburndale 13 5 12 18 — 48
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