ROCHESTER — There are few times when coaches are happy to be trailing an opponent, but NorthWood boss Adam Yoder was at least glad his Lady Panthers weren’t down by more at halftime of their afternoon game at Rochester Saturday.

After opening the contest on a 7-1 spurt, NorthWood gave up 12 unanswered points and went scoreless from the field for a span of more than 12 minutes stretching from Savannah Feenstra’s corner 3 at the three-minute mark of the first period to Emily Demitruk’s corner triple with just 28 seconds remaining until halftime. Yoder wasn’t pleased to be down, but given the circumstances, a 14-13 deficit didn’t look too bad.

And the Panthers proved more than up to rallying back from it, holding the host Zebras scoreless for the third period and punching back with their own 17-0 run en route to a convincing, 36-20 win.

“I felt like we jumped out and played some of our best basketball in the first three minutes of the game, and I think everybody kind of looked around and said’ OK, that’s good enough.’ Well, there was a long way to play,” said Yoder.

“At halftime, we basically said ‘We’re awful fortunate to be down one point here.’ Because it felt like we should’ve been down 10, but we just hung around and hung around with our defense. The second half it was all execution. Four turnovers the second half — if we do that every game, that’s pretty good. So if you’re finishing every possession with a shot, your chances of scoring are a lot higher, and we’re figuring that out.”

Not only did NorthWood (2-2) surrender just four turnovers in the second half, the Panthers also finished at a pretty good clip from the floor, too, going 6 for 15 (40 percent) and making 14 trips to the foul line, where they converted 10 of those charity tosses as the Zebras (2-2) were whistled for 11 fouls over the final two frames.

Rochester starting guard Morgan Ruff eventually fouled out with a full 1:42 still left to play, while 6’1” senior forward Kennedy Musselman was saddled with her third foul less than a minute into the second half and rode the bench for the remainder of the period.

The duo of Ruff and Musselman combined for 35 points in a win over Twin Lakes last Wednesday but totaled just nine against NorthWood. Musselman put up a team-high eight points ahead of front court mate Emma Dahlquist’s seven.

“One of our strategies with players like Musselman, Anne Secrest from Tippecanoe Valley, is we are going to go at them and at them and at them and make the officials have to give one or two (fouls) on them in the first half. I felt like we did a good job of that,” explained Yoder.

And with Musselman absent in the middle through the third, the Panthers made hay with Kate Rulli notching five of her 10 points in the third frame alone. Savannah Feenstra scored a game-high 15 for NorthWood.

“A lot of it stems from Maddy Payne gets a lot of attention from the other team. She’s a really solid player, and then Kenzie Bergman can knock down 3s so it allows Savannah to drive, and it allows us to look for Katelyn Rulli down low. Boy, did she finish around the basket well tonight. That was good,” Yoder said.

Rulli also led her team off the glass with eight rebounds, and Payne put up just four points but pulled down seven caroms. Bergman tallied three assists and three steals for the Panthers, who won their second straight. NorthWood returns home opposite Elkhart Central Tuesday. Varsity tip-off is scheduled for 7:40 p.m.

“I really, truly believe we’ve played better each game. From Riley to Penn to Mishawaka to Rochester, we’ve just kind of improved on some things every single game,” said Yoder. “We’re still a little complacent at times. We haven’t played a full 32 minutes by far yet, and that’s got to happen. It’s going to be a tough road to hoe the next week. We’ve got Elkhart Central, then at Norwell and then home for Triton so that’ll be three tough games before Thanksgiving. But that’s why we have the schedule — to prepare us for the tournament.”

In Saturday’s JV contest, NorthWood topped Rochester 24-14.

Kendal Miller tallied a game-high nine to lead the Panther JV, while Alea Minnich scored five, and Reagan Hartman scored four.

Abbi Richard scored five points for Rochester, and Catherine Hughes finished with four for the JV Zebras.