Batavia 53, Rochelle 46

How's this for a Friday night girls basketball shootout?

On one side, Rochelle center Nicole Newton raced to 18 first half points and finished with 24 points.

Batavia's Natalie Tarter did just a little better than Newton, however, scoring 26 points. And Tarter's Bulldogs won the game 53-46 to continue their perfect start to the season.

"I think we can play better, but this was one of our better games we've had," Tarter said.

Tarter came alive in the second half, as Batavia rallied from a 28-25 deficit. Tarter scored 7 points in the third quarter and a further 8 points in the fourth quarter, many on back-door cuts on which other players fed her with solid passes.

"I scored a lot of points but it was a team thing," Tarter said. "They fed me the ball. They'd get open and then find me when I got open. I was just there to finish the layups."

Batavia (5-0, 2-0 Western Sun) got off to a solid start. But Rochelle (1-5, 0-2) rallied behind 11 Newton points in the second quarter.

"I thought we played our best first half of the season," Rochelle coach Kay Dobbs said. "I thought we didn't adjust very well in the second half to their double-teaming the post. That hurt us."

Despite the extra attention, Newton still found openings for her shot in the second half and grabbed a game-high 15 rebounds. And she and Tarter put on quite a scoring show throughout the game.

"It really was a good girls basketball game," Dobbs said. "It was pretty well played on both sides."

Batavia's best surge of the evening came with the score tied 32-32 with 5:10 to play in the third quarter. Tarter and Kara Lydon split the team's points the rest of the way. Lydon finished with 13 points.

That surge finished with Batavia ahead 44-36 entering the fourth quarter. The Bulldogs only hit 2 shots in the fourth quarter, and Tarter scored all but 1 of her team's 9 points -- but those totals were enough to see through the victory.

"Being down at half, we tried to make some adjustments to take Newton out of the game more," Batavia coach Tim DeBruycker said. "We tried to double down a little bit."

Batavia only turned over the ball 10 times in the game and showed extreme patience throughout the contest. Some of that came through a slow-down offense in which the Bulldogs held the ball near midcourt to force the Hubs from their zone defense.

"It's kind of funny," Tarter said. "Sara (Fruendt) was kind of nervous with the ball and felt goofy just standing there up there. But it paid off for us."