Turnover trouble

A week ago Chris Krieg said his team’s key would be its ability to take care of the basketball.
It the season opener, turnovers killed the Patriots.
Jay County High School girls basketball team gave the ball away 35 times Tuesday, falling behind by double-digits in the first quarter on the way to a 53-32 loss to the visiting Fort Wayne South Side Archers.
“Against a quality team like Fort Wayne South if you turn the ball over 35 times and you lose by 21 points, that’s a blessing,” said JCHS coach Chris Krieg. “When you turn the ball over, you lose those opportunities to score. …
“It goes back to fundamentals. Unfortunately, our fundamentals weren’t very good.”
The Patriots’ only lead against South Side came in the opening minutes as senior LeAnn Horn hit a 3-pointer off an assist from freshman point guard Catherine Dunn. The Archers proceeded to score the next 12 points in a row as the home team went about 11 minutes without a field goal.
Jay County, which set a preseason goal of 12 turnovers per game, had 11 in the opening quarter and 20 by halftime. The turnover disparity led to South Side attempting 20 more field goals than the Patriots.
“For any team, we’re just going to try to put pressure on the ball at all times,” said Archers coach Juanita Goodwell, whose team won its third game over JCHS in the calendar year. “We just faced them in February in the sectional, so we’ve had a taste of what they do. It was really just trying to cut off their passing. They like to do a lot of post up moves, so we just tried to take a lot of that away.”
After Katie Aker hit a free throw to make the score 12-4 late in the first quarter, South Side responded with another 12-0 run.
The Archers scored the first seven points of the second half to extend their lead to 27 points on the way to the victory.
Junior Lynnia Noel paced South Side with 13 points, including a pair of 3-pointers. Ariana Simmons added nine points, and Maria Moore scored eight.
“(Scoring balance) is something that we definitely would like to have,” said Goodwell. “We had that a lot last year. … That’s going to be a goal for us. We have a lot of girls who can score. It’s just a matter of taking the right shot and making sure that we’re getting good possessions every time.”
Brittni Clopton, a sophomore, notched three rebounds and two blocks for South Side, and Lakyn Gulley and Jomani Thomas each had two assists.
Jay County outscored the Archers 20-14 over the final 12:06 of the game, but never got its deficit to fewer than 20 points.
Freshman Bre McIntire led the Patriots despite playing just two quarters after participating in three in the junior varsity game. She scored half of Jay County’s 12 first-half points and finished with eight to go along with three rebounds.
“She wants a spot,” said Krieg of McIntire, who hit all of her three field-goal attempts. “She proved that she wants to play on the varsity.
“It was her aggressiveness, her desire. … Her fundamentals were as good as anybody we had tonight.”
Senior Maria Murphy followed McIntire with seven points, and Horn finished with six on a pair of 3-pointers. Mariah Hornaday totaled seven rebounds, four points and two assists.
Jay County’s 2010-11 season came to an end with a 58-37 loss to the Archers in the opening round of the sectional tournament at Marion. It dropped last year’s season-opener 63-25 to South Side.
The Patriots will try for their first victory Friday when they visit Muncie Southside, a team they have beaten by at least 30 points in each of the last five meetings.

Junior varsity
The Patriots shut out South Side in the opening half as they rolled to a 19-5 victory.
Abbi Dunlavy scored six points to lead Jay County, which had a 13-0 lead at the intermission. Alex Loy added five points and Bre McIntire added four.
Kaeandra Ferguson totaled four points for the Archers.[[In-content Ad]]