Under pressure

Since joining the conference a year ago, the Patriots have done nothing but put pressure on the rest of the ACAC.
They did it last year, going 10-0 against Allen County Athletic Conference rivals — 7-0 regular season and 3-0 in the tournament.
They did it Friday night, using half- and full-court traps to rush out to an 14-0 lead over Bluffton en route to their 15th straight conference win.
And they did it again Wednesday, forcing 10 turnovers as they shut out Class 2A No. 10 South Adams in the first quarter of their ACAC tournament opening-round game. That gave Jay County a double-digit lead, and the home team also outscored the Starfires 19-3 in the third quarter of a 46-16 victory.
“I thought the first four minutes of the first half we played with a lot of intensity,” said JCHS coach Kirk Comer, whose team improved to 14-3. “We got up 10-0, and then we kind of relaxed, and we can’t do that. I was disappointed in that, but I talked to them at halftime about coming out with the kind of intensity we had to start the game, and I thought they did that.”
The Patriots advance to host Bluffton for the second Friday in a row — at 6 p.m. — after defeating the Tigers 64-27 last week. The JCHS boys semifinal game against Bluffton will follow.
The other girls semifinal will pit Southern Wells against Woodlan at Heritage.
South Adams, which committed 17 of its 22 turnovers in the first and third quarters, will play in a consolation game at 10 a.m. Saturday at Adams Central.
“For the most part this year, this whole season, we’ve done a great job against full-court pressure. It wasn’t a press that we hadn’t seen before. We just made some silly passes,” said SAHS coach Brett Freeman. “And they were a little more aggressive tonight than we expected them truly to be. They came out and set the tone early, and that’s what great teams do.”
For the second game in a row Abby Wendel scored off of the opening tip to get the Patriots going. Hannah Ault made it 4-0, and Emily Muhlenkamp and Ava Kunkler each scored following steals for an 8-0 lead that triggered Freeman’s first time out.
Kunkler then made it 10-0 and Freeman stopped the clock again as his team had nine turnovers less than six minutes into the game.
South Adams didn’t get its first point until Lexi Dellinger split a pair of free throws a minute into the second quarter. The visitors were 0-for-7 from the field with 12 turnovers before Dellinger added their first field goal with 4:54 to go in the opening half.
For the game, Jay County held the Starfires to 22 percent shooting after limiting them to 25 percent in their regular-season meeting Dec. 19.
“I thought our defense was really good the whole night,” said Comer, who got 12 points apiece from Taylor Homan and Abby Wendel. “I thought our help was really good. I thought our pressure was really good. I thought we did a good job of keeping the ball on one side of the floor.
“When you play against someone right up next to them, you’re probably going to get beat off the dribble, and you’ve got to really trust your teammates. And I thought our help did a really good job of getting there.”
Only two players — Madi Wurster and Dellinger with eight points apiece — scored for South Adams, which was playing its fourth consecutive game without leading scorer Cindy In’t Groen. She has been out of the country since late December but is expected to return this week and be back in the lineup for the Jan. 23 game against Woodlan.
“We’ve got to treat this as a learning experience. That’s what we’re looking at,” said Freeman, whose team had its lowest scoring output since a 54-13 loss to Bishop Luers in the 2013 sectional championship game. “We’re going to have to develop our skills and everybody is going to have to step up … On the offensive end, we’re still trying to get some of that to come out. …
“In the long run I think it’s really going to help us out because these kids are having to find ways to score … and hopefully Cindy can just fit right back into that system and we’ll be that much better for it.”
The Starfires have had a rough time at Jay County this year, losing twice by a combined score of 93-40. Against everyone else, they are 15-0 and have won by an average of 12 points per game.