JCHS moves to 5-0

MUNCIE — Good defense, rebounding and free-throw shooting make it much easier to protect a lead.
So when the Patriots scored the final nine points of the opening half to open an advantage, Muncie Southside was in trouble.
Jay County never let its lead slip to fewer than seven points in the second half, holding the host Rebels to 30 percent shooting, out-rebounding them 26-12 and hitting all of their six fourth-quarter free throws in a 40-30 victory.
“Once we got the lead, we felt pretty good about it,” said JCHS coach Craig Teagle, whose team is 5-0 for the third time in four seasons. “We’ve had a good free-throw shooting team the last two years. Our kids are pretty solid with the basketball and we just wanted to make sure we didn’t make any major mistakes.”
The Patriots grabbed control of the game late in the opening half after a Shemar Isom drive to the basket gave Southside (0-6) its only lead of the game at 12-10. Cade Price tied the game off an assist from Kegan Comer, and then Comer put JCHS ahead of good when he put back his own miss.
Brock McFarland drained a 3-pointer off an assist from Comer, who added a pull-up jumper for the 19-12 halftime lead.
“Any run like that is going to be so big. They just play off each other so well because they’ve played together for so long,” said Teagle of his junior guards. “We always seem to get a spurt like that from them.”
Jay County added the first basket of the second half to push its advantage to double-digits and stayed in control the rest of the way.
McFarland’s 12 points led the Patriots, and Scott Schwieterman joined him in double figures with 10. The duo also combined to give Jay Coutny the advantage on the glass with McFarland grabbing 12 boards and Schwieterman adding seven.
“We didn’t shoot it very well at all tonight (from 3-point range), so that gave us opportunities,” said Teagle, whose team had more offensive rebounds (eight) than Southside had defensive (seven). “Any time anybody plays a zone and you’re shooting long shots, there’s really no one that you can find to block out. There are so many creases and seams and I thought (we) did a great job finding them and going and attacking the boards and coming up with offensive rebounds.”
Myron Anthony had a game-high 14 points for Southside, with eight of those coming at the foul line. The Rebels struggled from the field, shooting just 20 percent in the opening half.
The Patriots, who are giving up just 33.4 points per game, held Southside to its lowest scoring output of the season.
Despite the defeat, Rebels coach Rick Baumgartner was pleased with his team’s effort.
“They’ve got a nice ball club,” he said of Jay County. “We just did some really nice things defensively. If we hit anything, we’ve got a shot at winning this one. We did the best job offensively we done all year long as far as moving the ball and getting open looks. We just didn’t knock down shots.
“I’ve got to take this a step at a time and look for improvement, and I saw an awful lot of improvement just in a week.”

Junior varsity
The Patriots suffered their first defeat, falling behind by nine points at halftime en route to a 46-37 loss to Southside.
Kyle Selvey scored 12 points to lead Jay County (4-1), which shot just 6-of-16 from the foul line and gave up eight 3-pointers. Jacob Schlosser added nine points.
Aaren Kelly hit four triples for the Rebels and finished with 14 points.[[In-content Ad]]