Hiland’s Troyer buries 9 treys in win over Knights

Every basketball season is filled with many memories, some good, some bad, some incredulous.

On Wednesday, Dec. 27 in a game featuring cross-county rivals Hiland and host West Holmes, Hiland’s Trish Troyer posted a game for the ages. Troyer went Steph Curry on the Lady Knights, pouring in 29 points to lead the Lady Hawks to a 74-40 victory.

Pretty much the entire gymnasium was shocked when Troyer scored a mere two-pointer late in the third quarter.

However, the reason wasn’t because the junior guard scored, but because she did so inside the arc. Out of her 29 points, 27 of them came on rainbow 3-pointers.

While former Hiland greats Leah Hochstetler and Bryn Mullet have each connected for 10 3-pointers in a single game for the school record, chances are neither was much more precise than Troyer, who drilled 9-of-12 from downtown.

“It was a little bit of a coming-out party for Trish,” Hiland head coach Brady Schlabach said. “We’ve known she was capable of putting up big numbers like this. She’s shot it well this year, but this was something special.”

In Hiland’s fast-paced 74-40 victory over West Holmes, Troyer was splashing down almost every type of 3-point shot imaginable, at one point canning 6-of-7 in the first half en route to a 29-point effort that saw her teammates pleading for her to fire up several more treys late in the game.

However, Troyer showed incredible sportsmanship and a team-first attitude in passing up the shots to either find teammates or help run the clock out without running up the score.

Troyer came into the season with a decent resume, having averaged almost 9.5 points per contest in her freshman year, but she took some time off and didn’t play as a sophomore, only to return this season to help bolster an already strong roster.

Troyer has slowly worked herself into the rotation, but outside of a 21-point effort on a 4-of-6 performance from beyond the arc in a win over Claymont on Dec. 6, she has not contributed greatly in the Hiland scoring attack, averaging under five points per contest in the other games.

Thus, it was not surprising West Holmes head coach Lindsy Belden didn’t spend an immaculate amount of time in practice around stopping Troyer, when other major threats like 1,000-point career scorer Ashley Mullet and inside-outside threats like Joplin Yoder and Mallory Stutzman present plenty of challenges.

“We knew that she could shoot it,” Belden said of Troyer. “We knew she could get hot, but that was a whole different level of hot. Sometimes you’ve got to tip your cap. She played an amazing game.”

Once Troyer hit three triples in the opening quarter, the Lady Knights had to start paying attention. The problem in stopping the on-target Troyer was twofold.

First, she was so dialed in that almost none of her long-range attempts even drew iron, nestling in the net with ease.

The other thing that made it difficult to defend her was Hiland’s ball movement. The Lady Hawks exhibited quick movement passing the ball around the perimeter and simply kept the WHHS defenders moving until they found their on-fire teammate for an open look.

“I thought we were extremely unselfish,” Schlabach said. “We actually didn’t run many plays for Trish. It was all penetrate and pitch and make one more pass to find the open shooter. It’s fun to play like that because it keeps everyone involved, but at some point tonight, the girls sensed Trish was so zeroed in they started really looking for her.”

In addition, Hiland point guard Ashley Mullet plays at such a high speed that it forces teams to deal with her before they can often get set on the defensive end.

“The ability for Ashley to get downhill and make people defend her out of position and her ability to score in bunches forces people to key on her, and when that happens, she’s going to find people, and we have people who can knock down threes,” Schlabach said. “Tonight, that was Trish, and she was on fire.”

The phrase “lighting it up” in hoops refers to when a player catches fire and seemingly everything they shoot finds its mark. This was one of those evenings for Troyer, and it certainly became one of those games that not only creates a moment in time to remember, but also something that can build great confidence.

Schlabach said having Troyer developing her scoring ability only adds to an already plentiful offensive arsenal for the currently undefeated 9-0 Lady Hawks.