Bath girls rally past Pewamo-Westphalia in key CMAC contest

BATH - Tessa Hosford knew someone needed to get things going for the Bath High School girls basketball team.

And the senior guard took it upon herself to make some things happen.

Hosford was a key spark while leading the Bees to a key CMAC victory Thursday night.

Hosford had a game-high 19 points and made the go-ahead 3 in the final minute to lead Bath to a 49-47 come-from-behind victory over Class C No. 3-ranked Pewamo-Westphalia.

“I just wanted to win really bad and I'm happy we fought back,” Hosford said. “I was proud of us.

“We dug ourselves a hole early and that was kind of hard for us to fight back. It was really important for our standing (in the league) that we beat them and we did.”

Taylor Buck added 11 points and Jessica Stoskopf scored 10 for the Bees, who overcame a 16-point deficit in the second half to win their third straight and sweep the regular-season series against Pewamo-Westphalia.

Emily Spitzley had 15 points to lead the Pirates (10-2, 7-2 CMAC), who never trailed until the final minute while having their eight-game winning streak halted.

“You just can’t pass up opportunities like we had tonight,” P-W coach Steve Eklund said. "We played a really good 20 minutes and then we just took our foot off the gas and made some mental mistakes. Our defense wasn’t good enough and we’ve got to get better.”

Bath (8-2, 7-1) held P-W without a field goal and to just five points in the final quarter while rallying to the win. The Pirates’ last field goal came with 57.2 seconds remaining in the third quarter.

“We just started working harder,” Hosford said of the second-half comeback. “Our coach said he didn’t think we worked hard in the first half and we picked it up in the second half.”

Hosford scored 15 points after the intermission to fuel the Bees, who trailed 36-20 with 4:52 remaining in the third quarter. She had 11 points in the final quarter and hit a 3-pointer with 33 seconds left that gave the Bees their first lead of the night.

Hosford also had a late steal and hit a free throw with 3.9 seconds remaining.

“You can just see it in her eyes sometimes,” Bath coach Chris Rypstra said. “You could just see her going to that next gear that a lot of people don’t have. You kind of let her go and she makes plays 99 times out of 100 when it matters.”

Contact Brian Calloway at bcalloway@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @brian_calloway.