Jay Co. wins big (02/06/08)

The Patriots drained nine 3-pointers. North Side finished with eight field goals, total.

That's basically everything anyone needs to know about Tuesday's tournament opener.

Cassandra Huelskamp buried two 3-pointers in the first three minutes, setting the tone as the Jay County High School girls basketball team walloped Fort Wayne North Side 59-27 in the opening game of Class 4A's Sectional 6 at Huntington North.

Huelskamp hit 3-pointers off assists from Lindsey Wellman 1:39 into the game to open the scoring and Dana Horn at the 5:43 mark to get the Patriots going. Abby Loy, the high scorer in the game with 14 points, added a hoop off the second of Horn's seven assists to make it 8-2, and JCHS never trailed.

"It's huge," said Comer of Huelskamp's hot start. "If we have her outside shooting, it just makes us that much better.

"We came out and shot the ball well."

Kaelee Keller hit a 3-pointer to close out a 15-5 first quarter for the Patriots, and Horn and Cara Garringer each buried triples as the team made five of its first seven long distance attempts. Huelskamp finished 3-of-4 from downtown, and Loy and Garringer each went 2-for-3.

Jay County, which at 18-3 is two wins short of the school record, led 30-15 at halftime and was up by 16 with 5:30 left in the third quarter. Then the Patriots put the game away as Huelskamp hit her third 3-pointer and Loy, Pazia Speed, Amber Edmundson and Garringer each added hoops in an 11-0 run.

Loy was near perfect, shooting 6-of-7 for her game-high scoring total. Huelskamp added 11 points, and Garringer scored eight.

Great distribution led to a 59-percent shooting effort as more than two-thirds of the JCHS hoops were assists. Horn racked up seven assists, and six other Patriots had at least one.

"Dana played a really good floor game, which you would expect out of a senior point guard," said Comer. "They distributed the ball around really well and made a lot of good decisions. They got the ball to the shooters in the right spots."

It was also a dominant game on the glass for Jay County. Although no Patriot grabbed more than five rebounds, they earned a 30-19 advantage on the glass.

Edmundson paced JCHS with five boards, Wellman had four and Horn and Huelskamp each grabbed three.

Suanquell Whitley snagged seven rebounds for North Side (6-15).

"We did a good job on the boards, but I told the girls after the game we're going to have to do better Friday night," said Comer, whose team gets a rematch against the No. 7 Fort Wayne South Side Archers in the semifinal round Friday at 6 p.m. "A lot of times we only were sending one or two people in and our goal is to send four in every possession."

South Side (18-4) advanced to the semifinal round with a 69-55 victory Tuesday over Homestead (10-10). Jay County lost 62-58 to the Archers in the first game of the season.

Perhaps the only concern the Patriots could take away from Tuesday's win over North Side was the general sloppiness of the game. In the first half, JCHS turned the ball over 13 times and put the poor-shooting Redskins (4-of-20) at the line 10 times.

"I was disappointed with the way we fouled in the first half," said Comer. "I thought we reached too much. In the second half we did a lot better job of playing team basketball, relying on our help.

"I think a lot of it in the first half was nerves. Hopefully we got the nerves out of the way."

Jay County turned the ball over just three times in the second half.

Jayla Starks scored nine points to lead North Side. Imani Freeman had six points and both of the Redsksins' assists, and Chanese Birchfield also scored six points.

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