Murphy lifts JC

Tuesday’s second half left plenty for the Patriot coaching staff to lament.
There were the eight third-quarter turnovers that helped bring New Castle back.
The Trojans’ ability to get to the basket after the intermission was also vexing.
But Maria Murphy’s offensive game was enough to cover up all of the issues.
The Jay County High School senior scored a career-high 25 points — 20 in the second half — and the Patriots survived potential game-winning and game-tying shots in the final 10 seconds to fight off New Castle for a 47-45 victory.
“I told the girls in the locker room, ‘I will take an ugly win over a pretty loss any time,’” said JCHS coach Chris Krieg, whose team had lost back-to-back games and will play its next four on the road. “We’ve just got to try to clean some of this stuff up and go from there.”
The Trojans (5-9) had a chance to win despite being unable to stop Murphy inside, as they trailed by two after Mariah Hornaday split a pair of free throws with 44.4 seconds left. New Castle coach Roger Miller chose to pass on a time out and instead let his team run its offense to get senior Allyson Garrett a shot.
Garrett, who had hit four 3-pointers, got the look the Trojans wanted, but missed a triple from the right wing. Shelby Alderson grabbed the offensive board and got the ball back to Garrett only to have the senior miss an off-balance two-point try as time expired.
“It was going to be to Ally Garrett,” said Miller. “Ally Garrett was hot tonight. And we got her a shot. ...
“And then we got the ball again.
“I’m not a big believer that you call a timeout with just a few seconds left. The other team will set their defense up. I think it’s better to scramble play ... We knew where we wanted to go with the ball ... and she got a shot.”
Murphy made just about every shoot she took for the Patriots in the second half.After the Trojans opened the third quarter on a 10-2 run with help from Jay County turnovers to take their first lead of the game, Murphy responded with a three-point play to put the home team back on top. She scored 20 of the Patriots’ 23 second-half points and finished 10-of-14 from the field and 5-of-5 from the line.
“One thing about Murph is, she is a competitor-and-a-half,” said Krieg. “She hates to lose, probably as bad or worse than me. So she’s going to play her heart out.”
Miller said it was some early long-distance shooting that forced his team to change its defensive look and made it difficult for them to handle Murphy. Kassi Hemmelgarn hit each of her first 3-point tries for the Patriots and scored all of her 11 points in the opening half.
“We were going to play a 3-2 zone, drop the top down and double team them down inside,” said Miller. “And then (Hemmelgarn) hit two threes on us and it looked like if we were going to be in a 3-point contest with them they were going to win. So we got out of it ...”
As the game wore on it was New Castle that cashed in 3-pointer after 3-pointer, finishing 10-of-19 (53 percent) from long distance while shooting just 5-of-17 inside the arc.
Garrett’s four 3-pointers keyed her 16-point effort. Fellow senior Emily Smith added 10 points, and Holli Poe scored eight.
Jay County, which scored the first eight points of the game, dominated the glass to the tune of a 27-12 rebounding advantage. Hornaday, who scored seven points, led the way with eight rebounds and Murphy grabbed six.

Junior varsity
The Patriots suffered their first loss of the season as their rally fell short in a 46-42 loss to New Castle.
Jay County trailed by double digits in the fourth quarter before fighting back to pull within 43-42 on an Abbi Dunlavy 3-pointer with 54 seconds left. But the home team would not score again as the Trojans held on for the win.
Bre McIntire racked up 26 points for the Patriots before fouling out with 1:04 left. Dunlavy added nine points.
Shelby Gibson led New Castle to the victory with 13 points. Payton Anderson followed with eight points.[[In-content Ad]]