Jay routs Woodlan, moves to 5-0

The Patriots and Warriors were close for three quarters.
It was the opening quarter that gave the home team the advantage it needed.
Jay County High School’s girls basketball team raced out to a 15-2 advantage after the first quarter and kept a double-digit lead for the remainder of the game in a 54-34 victory Friday against Woodlan.
It was the first Allen County Athletic Conference victory for the Patriots.
“We needed that start,” said JCHS coach Chris Krieg, whose team moves to 5-0 for the first time since the 2008 Patriots went undefeated in the regular season. “I felt like we played even the rest of the way. Teams like this we can’t play even with.”
Ava Kunkler and Taylor Homan made back-to-back lay ups to get the Patriots on the board first, then Rain Hinton followed with a bucket of her own to make it a 4-2 game.
It was the closest Woodlan (2-3, 0-1 ACAC) would get for the remainder of the contest.
Jay County scored the next 14 points as Bre McIntire, Catherine Dunn, Lyla Muhlenkamp, Homan and Kunkler all found the bottom of the basket. Hinton added two more of her game-high 21 points — 17 came in the second half — but not before Dunn split a pair of free throws and McIntire and Homan sank 3-pointers to give Jay County a 25-4 lead midway through the second quarter.
“I think it’s a confidence booster,” Dunn said of the early advantage. “It helps us out and makes us realize we have some room if we make mistakes.”
But Jay County didn’t make many mistakes, and it capitalized on seven first quarter turnovers by Woodlan.
“We got off to a bad start. We don’t match up well with them, teams with quickness, the speed they have and the guard play that they have,” Woodlan coach Gary Cobb said. “We just turned it over too much early in the game (and) we couldn’t get into any kind of rhythm of playing.
“I think it affected us mentally as well as physically.”
Trailing 27-9 at halftime, Woodlan scored the first six points of the third period on buckets by Emily Summers, Jazmine Williams and Hinton. Dunn and Wendel put Jay County’s lead back at 24, and from then on almost every field goal by Warriors was matched by the Patriots.
Dunn and Wendel scored the next seven points for the Patriots —Dunn finished with a team-high 16 points, and Wendel had six. Then, Woodlan started feeding Hinton down low, something it wasn’t able to do in the opening half.
“I thought we played scared in the first half,” Cobb said. “The second half I thought we played more aggressive. We had that intense look in our eye that we didn’t have at the start of the game.”
Hinton, who finished 10-of-17 from the field, scored 10 straight points for Woodlan. All but five of her 21 points came in the paint.
“They just buried us inside in the second half,” Krieg said. “We have to do a better job defensively on the post. We have to figure out how we can defend it better than what we’re doing now.”
Midway through the fourth, Wendel drove the baseline for a lay up and Homan hit a 3-pointer on an assist from Kunkler to push the Patriots’ lead to 50-26.
Homan finished with 13 points after a 10-point first half to join Dunn in double figures. The sophomore added three rebounds and a team-high five assists.
“That’s what I like about this group, they share the ball,” Krieg said of his team’s 11 assists on the night. “They pass up a good shot for a great shot. We’re a team that’s going to be hard to guard because we have a team that can score.”
Jay County’s advantage would not get to fewer than 20 points for the remainder of the game.

Junior varsity
After a low-scoring first quarter, Jay County exploded for 17 points in the second on its way to a 36-24 victory.
The Patriots built a 32-16 lead after three quarters before finishing off the Warriors for their fourth win of the season.
Betsy Muhlenkamp led Jay County (4-1) with nine points, and Britlyn Dues tallied eight. Brianna Muhlenkamp scored five points, and Emily Muhlenkamp, Kyndal Miller and Audrey Shreve each notched four.