Jay gets shot down

FORT WAYNE — The Spartans came in as the third-highest scoring team in the state.
The Patriots had a tough time slowing down a team that averages more than 73 points per game.
Jay County High School’s girls basketball team had its season come to an end Friday with a 62-39 loss to the Homestead Spartans in the Class 4A Sectional 6 tournament semifinal at Homestead.
The second-ranked Spartans advance to the sectional championship against Fort Wayne South Side at 7 p.m. tonight. The Archers defeated the Huntington North Vikings 58-48 earlier in the evening.
“They are one of the best shooting teams I have ever seen in girls basketball,” said JCHS coach Kirk Comer, whose team ended its season 19-5. “I am really proud of our girls. We competed tonight.”
Homestead (23-2) did most of its damage from long range, making 12 of 28 shots from behind the 3-point line. It took a quarter for the Spartans to get warmed up, though, as they didn’t have a single triple in the opening quarter.
Jay County trailed by just two after the first eight minutes. That’s when Spartan shooters Karissa McLaughlin and Madisen Parker started heating up. McLaughlin, who has committed to the University of Florida and led all players with 26 points, hit her first of six 3-pointers on the Spartan’s first possession of the second quarter.
She and Parker combined to nail six shots from beyond the arc in the second, helping the Spartans to a 31-22 lead at halftime. Homestead made eight baskets in the period — only one was worth two points.
“We knew going into the game that they were going to hit threes and that we were going to have to contest their shots,” said Wendel. “We gave them some open 3-point looks and they hit them, so that definitely hurt us and gave them an edge as we weren’t able to match them from behind the 3-point line.”
The Homestead juniors hit from all over the court, too. They each made triples from the corners, the wings and the top of the key.
Jay County junior Taylor Homan and senior Ava Kunkler assisted on each other’s baskets to start the third quarter, which they sandwiched around a put-back bucket by the Spartans’ Jazmyne Geist. Kunkler’s only points of the game got Jay County as close as seven, 33-26.
Two minutes later, Wendel drove for two points to make it 37-28 in favor of Homestead, and after a flurry of misses from each team McLaughlin closed out the quarter by hitting two more 3-pointers on assists from Parker.
McLaughlin and Parker — the latter made five 3-pointers and was second on the team with 19 points — drained three more triples, and Nicole Weaver added another during the fourth quarter.
Meanwhile, the Spartan defense suffocated the Patriots.
In the first half, Jay County got its best 3-point shooter Lyla Muhlenkamp open looks. She was 3-of-5 from long range at the intermission, but was not able to take a shot in the final 16 minutes.
Muhlenkamp, who earlier in the year set new program record for 3-pointers in a game (12), finished her senior campaign with 62, to improve her mark for most in a season.
“We had some sets we ran early and in the second half we couldn’t get her the ball,” Comer said. “Got to give them credit, they played really good defense.”
Wendel, who worked harder than she had all season to run the Patriot offense, agreed.
“Their defense was good,” she said. “They always had ball pressure on us which made it so we had to work hard to get open and made it difficult for us to get our shots off.
But as the deficit grew down the stretch, the Patriots continued to fight through the pressure.
“I knew that we had to put a stop to their run and that we had to keep going and pushing back against them,” Wendel said. “I wasn’t going to let them win without a fight.
“I want to give credit to my team for not giving up at all throughout the game. We all played it out until the end.”
Comer commended Wendel’s effort as she and classmates Muhlenkamp and Kunkler played their final game as a Patriot.
“She showed a lot of heart and leadership,” he said of Wendel. “All of our seniors, we have great seniors. In all the times I’ve coached I’ve never had three seniors like this that were committed to our program the way they were.
“I couldn’t be more proud of the girls.”