Special season comes to close for Rossville girls basketball

GASTON − In the moments following Rossville’s 36-19 loss to Tri-Central in the Class A, Regional 27 championship, head coach Hornets Chad Geheb struggled to wrap his head around the totality of all that his team had accomplished throughout the 2022-23 season.

"I'll probably appreciate what we did more in a couple days, but I can already express that I'm super proud of what we accomplished this year," Geheb said. "I'm super proud of how far we came as a team."

But from the outside looking in, Rossville's girls basketball team put together a year in which they started by losing six games in their first month of the regular season before winning 14 of their final 19, including the program's second sectional title overall.

As the Hornets continued their hunt for more ways to overcome the odds while stacking championship hardware, they came across a Tri-Central team that started regional play by converting on five 3s in the first quarter on Saturday.

Rossville fell behind after the first period 15-2 while the Trojans rode an 18-point run through the opening minutes of the second quarter, further burying the Hornets into a 20-point deficit at halftime.

Geheb reflected on how Tri-Central’s hot start put his team on its heels in a game where the Trojans shot 60 percent from beyond the arc in the first half.

"We knew that they had a lot of kids that shot them, but when you look at their stats, their percentages, we just felt that was the best defense that we could play. … We tried to go man-to-man and had a hard time guarding and once you get behind and you're a zone team, then it becomes really difficult to come back,” Geheb said.

Coming into Saturday’s game, Tri-Central shot 24 percent from 3 while going 18 percent from the field in its Hoosier Heartland Conference clash against the Hornets on Jan. 13, a game in which Rossville won 34-29.

After a slow first half start, Rossville looked to find its bearings in the second when Addi Gorbett hit a jumper with 4:25 remaining in the third to mark the Hornets' first field goal since the opening minute of the game.

Senior Avery Gorbett cut into the Trojans' deficit when she put together a seven-point run of her own, including back-to-back jump shots from the baseline to end the third quarter.

Still, offensive woes plagued Rossville throughout as it finished the game shooting 19 percent from the field while turning the ball over 12 times, eight of which came in the first half.

"We talked about their physicality on defense and offense, it's going to be tenacious," Geheb said. "It's really hard to simulate that in practice. … I just felt like we let them be physical with us and we didn't respond the way I was hoping we would respond and obviously that took us out of our offensive flow."

Avery Gorbett led the team in scoring and rebounds with 12 and 8, followed by seven points from freshman Addi Gorbett.

With another number to hang on the wall in Rossville's gymnasium following its sectional championship and the first winning season since 2018, a lot of credit goes towards the Hornets' three graduating seniors.

"They're a special group," Geheb said. "When they came up as freshmen, I was really excited for them and we endured a lot over the last three years probably a lot more frustration and learning through the losses. All those play a role in their success as well. They’re a special group, each with a unique set of skills that contributed to our success this year."