Ousted in opener: Girls fade in 3rd

Since joining the Allen County Athletic Conference in 2014-15, at least one Patriot squad had played for a tournament title every season.

Woodlan put and end to that streak Tuesday.

The host Warriors ushered both Jay County teams into consolation games, as their girls team opened the evening with a 36-25 victory and the boys team followed with a 59-38 triumph.

The games weren’t upsets, given that both Jay County squads had lost to the Warriors earlier in the year. But this marks new territory for the girls team especially, as it had played in the ACAC tournament championship game in each of the previous five seasons, winning it in 2015, ’16, ’18 and ’19. (They had also won five straight regular-season conference crowns prior to this year.)

And while this marks the third time in the last four seasons that the boys have been bounced from the tournament in the opening round, they were coming off back-to-back regular-season ACAC titles.

Now, for the first time in their six seasons in the league, both Patriot teams will head to Bluffton for consolation games Saturday against Heritage. The girls will play at 10 a.m., and the boys will follow at approximately 2 p.m.

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The Patriot girls gave away their chance at advancing in the tournament in the form of turnovers, struggling to hold onto the ball in the third quarter.

They opened the period 0-for-4 with four turnovers — Woodlan got its two baskets during the stretch off of steals — prompting coach Kirk Comer to call two timeouts less than a minute apart.

But Jay County (10-7) still turned the ball over on three of its next four possessions before Renna Schwieterman’s 3-pointer finally broke a six-minute scoring drought.

“I feel like we didn’t lose tonight,” said Comer. “I feel like we beat ourselves tonight. We didn’t execute in the second half.”

The visitors turned the ball over two more times in the third quarter while Woodlan’s Addison Bayman — she finished with a game-high 16 points — closed it on a personal 7-0 run that included a half-court 3-pointer at the buzzer.

“The shot at the buzzer at the end of the third quarter, really I thought it changed everything,” said Warriors coach Gary Cobb, whose team advances to play Adams Central in Friday’s semifinal. “I thought it pumped us up and it kind of deflated them a little bit.”

While Woodlan (13-5) managed just five points in the final period, the Patriots were never able to get into a groove either. They struggled against the 2-3 zone throughout the second half — the Warriors used their three players in the middle to essentially triple team Schwieterman in the high post — and shot 3-of-20 (15 percent) from the field.

“That’s what we wanted to do,” said Cobb, whose team also hauled in 20 offensive rebounds. “We wanted to try to limit her touches as much as we could in the zone.

“When Schwietermen went to the high post, we covered her up pretty well there. She’s a great player, as a freshman. She’s tough to guard.”

While Bayman was the key in the second half, junior Alicia McMahan came off the bench to give her team a spark in the first. She scored on a put-back to tie the game at seven and added five more points as part of a 15-2 run that gave Woodlan a lead it would never relinquish.

Schwieterman’s team-best 13 points for JCHS came on 4-of-17 shooting. Madison Dirksen followed with six points, all of which came in the first half.

While the loss was just the Patriots’ second in their last 11 games, Comer has not been happy with the way his team has played recently. They dropped a 65-50 contest Jan. 2 to Yorktown and then topped Concordia and Bluffton last week despite some significant offensive struggles.

“I don’t think we’ve played well since Christmas break,” said Comer. “We’ve been fortunate. Sometimes when you get wins you overlook things. I think that’s what’s happened. … We’ve got to do a better job. …

“The biggest thing I’m disappointed in is offensively, I felt like the whole night, especially the second half, we were rushing things rather than letting the offense work … We’re forcing things. When we do that, we’re not very good.”