When two teams in any basketball game combine to shoot 27.3 percent, it can only be described as ugly.

But regardless of how it looked on paper, Indiana was able to avenge last week’s loss in Kentucky with a 65-49 victory on Saturday at Conseco Fieldhouse in the second game of the Indiana-Kentucky All-Star Series.

The two squads made up of the best seniors in both states shot 33-for-121 from the field with Indiana actually the better of the two at 28.8 percent.

Despite the statistics, the consensus from the players was they played much better than the first game in Bowling Green, Ky.

“(Last week) we played like all-stars and not a team,” said Indiana head coach Jack Campbell of Chesterton. “This week, we played like a team. We made a lot of improvements and changes both offensively and defensively.”

One of the squad’s Northwest Indiana members agreed.

“We grew as a team in the last week, and I was very proud of our team chemistry,” said Valparaiso’s Cassie Kerns.

That last aspect is the most difficult to achieve with the 14 high school standouts only having a few weeks to mesh.

“It’s really hard not being the main player like on our high school teams,” said Crown Point’s Cassie Pruzin, who only played six minutes, but managed to drain a pair of free throws for two points. “The girls are all coming from great high school programs.”

After gradually building a 10-point lead at halftime, Campbell’s crew turned up the defense in the second half, forcing 14 Kentucky turnovers with a 10-2 run to start the half.

Kerns played an all-around game as the starting center. She only scored four points in 25 minutes, but was able to do other things, like pull down six rebounds, block two shots and dish out a game-high five assists. Three of those assists were to the game’s MVP, Kayla Roudebush of Hamilton Southeastern, while she was draining three of her five 3-pointers.

“She thanked me, of course,” Kerns said with a wry smile. “I tried not to force anything. The post doesn’t always get shots in all-star games. If I’m passing to the right person, I feel like I’m getting points myself.”

Roudebush led the way with a game-high 25 points to go with six rebounds. She was flirting with an Indiana-Kentucky girls game record. She reached the 25-point mark with more than nine minutes left in the second half. The record is 34 points by Erica Hallman from Kentucky in 2002.

n No rest for the weary: One of the reasons the Indiana girls might have not been themselves last week in Kentucky was the schedule leading up to the game.

It wasn’t that the girls were working harder than normal. It was the non-basketball activities that clogged the day, resulting in very little rest.

“I felt better today than last week,” Kerns said with a look of relief. “I felt drained last week. We would get back to the hotel at 12 at night and have to wake up at 7 a.m. I think if we got to rest a little more, we might have played better (in Kentucky).”

n GOOD ADVICE: Pruzin had a slight advantage over other players in knowing what the all-star experience was all about. She got to talk with fellow Crown Point graduate Anne Kvachkoff, who was in Conseco to watch the game on Saturday.

“I talked to her a lot and got some good advice,” Pruzin said. “She told me to play as hard as I could whatever time I was on the floor.”

n be prepared: The consensus among the Indiana coaches and players was that playing the two games last week against the junior all-star squads really helped the girls prepare for Saturday’s contest.

“It was good to get more game play because there’s only so much you can do in practice,” Campbell said.

The top player for Indiana in both games agreed.

“Every minute in the games against the Junior All-Stars, I thought about how I came out in the first game against Kentucky and how that affected the team,” said Roudebush, who admitted to playing too much individual basketball in Kentucky.

“By playing against (the juniors), it gave us the chance to play better.”