Panthers pounce on Patriots

The Patriots played about as well as they could have during the first half.

Sure, they had some turnovers, but they were able to get into their offense and make some shots. After eight minutes of play, they were ahead by two.

The Panther pressure started to mount in the second quarter, and it became suffocating in the third.

A stretch of five turnovers in six possessions to start the third quarter crippled the Jay County High School girls basketball in a 50-26 loss to the Class 4A No. 2 North Central Panthers on Saturday.

“I think we went in the locker room and we were satisfied with what we did,” said JCHS coach Kirk Comer, whose team led 8-6 at the end of the first quarter and went into halftime only down five, 21-16. “They picked up their intensity and we didn’t match that.

“We had a turnover, one turnover led to another and we dropped our heads. I basically felt like — I don’t want to say we quit, I don’t think we quit — it’s just that we dropped our heads and against a team like that you’ve got to stay at a high level and we didn’t have that intensity that we had in the first half.”

North Central (3-0), which slipped to No. 3 in Monday’s new coaches’ poll, forced the Patriots (1-1) into an over-and-back violation to start the third quarter, and Nakaih Hunter scored the first of her two baskets on the next possession. Back-to-back turnovers again by Jay County led to a pair of Tanyuel Welch free-throws, and Welch then hit a mid-range jumper to push the Panther lead to 27-16 and force Comer into taking a timeout.

Out of the break, North Central’s Meg Newman, an Arizona State University signee who is ranked as the No. 33 overall player in country by ESPN, got a jumper to fall from the right elbow before making a pair of free throws.

Suddenly the Patriots’ five-point deficit ballooned to 16.

Newman, a 6-foot, 3-inch forward, led the Panthers with 14 points, matching JCHS sophomore Renna Schwieterman. Newman had a pair of buckets late the fourth quarter as part of a 10-0 run that gave the Panthers their biggest lead of the night, 50-24.

Jay County, which hosts Bellmont on Friday ahead of a Saturday road matchup with Oak Hill, slowed the tempo down to begin the game, and it took nearly two minutes for the home team to score the first points of the night.

Schwieterman drove the lane and kicked out to a wide open Madison Dirksen, who drained a 3-pointer to get the scoring started. Following a Panther put-back, Schwieterman got a basket on an Izzy Rodgers assist to make it 5-2 in favor of the home team.

Dirksen ended with five points, a day after notching a career-high 24.

Rodgers, who scored a career-high 16 points Friday in a win against Union City, started the second quarter with her only bucket, a triple from the left corner, as Jay County had its largest lead of the night, 11-6.

But the Panthers scored eight straight points — two free throws and a put-back from Newman, a Destinee Hooks fast break and a Makenzie Carroll layup on a fast break — to go ahead for good, 14-11.

“The first half, I thought we did a really good job defensively,” Comer said. “We did not do a very good job boxing out.”

The Panthers played an up-in-your-face, physical defense. Coupled with the full-court press in the second half, it proved challenging for the Patriots to fight through. But Comer was still pleased with the way his team continued to battke against a tall, athletic North Central squad

“I think the big thing I take away from tonight is the girls learned how to play harder,” he said. “They know they have that in them. They don’t know how hard they can play yet … It’s our job (as coaches) to push them to their limits.

“There’s a lot more that we have in us. We just took it to another level tonight, which if we continue going forward, that will win us a lot of games.