Tribe holds off Bulldogs

FORT RECOVERY — The offense went stagnant.
There were mistakes on defense, too.
But despite not playing well at times and seeing the third-quarter lead disappear, the Tribe protected Fort Site Fieldhouse.
Fort Recovery High School’s girls basketball team fought through tough stretches at both ends of the court Tuesday to beat the Celina Bulldogs, 39-32, on senior night.
“Defensively we weren’t as good as we needed to be,” said FRHS coach Brian Patch, whose team finished 11th in the Division III Associated Press poll released Monday. “Mentally we just weren’t there at times and that was the frustrating part.
“We knew they had good players and they were a good team, we just didn’t execute as well as we needed to at times.”
A 3-pointer from the top of the key by Grace Thien put Fort Recovery (17-6) ahead 27-18 midway through the third quarter.
Then the well started to go dry for the Indians on offense, as they weren’t able to score for the rest of the quarter. The teams combined to score 11 points in the period.
Fort Recovery scored the first five points in the third quarter, but was 2-for-12 (16.7 percent) from the field out of halftime.
“We have to keep running our offense and get good shots,” Patch said of the offensive struggles “Lot of it was the physical part, they were bodying us up. We missed some easy shots, some point blank shots. Those are the ones we have to be able to take our time, power up and finish, and we didn’t do that.”
Celina (9-9), however, clawed its way back, using a 9-0 run that carried into the fourth quarter to tie the game at 27 with 6:40 to play.
Jenna Berry drained a pair of 3-pointers and had another long jump shot, accounting for eight points during the streak. She was 3-for-5 from long range on her way to a game-high 15 points.
“I think we were both tired,” Celina coach Steve Bader said. “I thought we did a good job defensively when we moved our feet and communicated. They weren’t hitting shots either. We were only giving them one possession. That is the difference between the third quarter and the first half.”
Whitney Will, who led the Indians with 11 points and shared the team high of five rebounds, scored seven of the Indians’ 10 points in the fourth quarter.
She scored twice in the paint on passes from Kendra Siefring (nine points, four assists), and had another bucket on a Jocelyn Kaiser (eight points) assist. She also split a pair of free throws — as did Siefring — and Kiah Wendel had a jumper from the left baseline as the Indians were able to get their offense back on track.
“We knew they were going to come out and try to do some trapping,” Patch said. “We knew they had some fouls to give. We wanted to try to spread them out a little bit to get them some good looks.”
Widening the Celina defense allowed Will to slip behind the zone and get open looks under the bucket.
“That’s what we were trying to get,” Patch said. “Whitney finally was able to finish some of those inside.”

Junior varsity
Fort Recovery had its lead slip away in the third quarter and wasn’t able to get it back in a 28-22 defeat to Celina.
The Indians (6-14) outscored Celina 7-2 in the first quarter and took a 14-13 lead into halftime. An 8-6 margin by Celina gave the visitors a 21-20 advantage after three quarters, and the Indians managed just two points in the final seven minutes for its third consecutive loss.
Chloe Metzger did all her damage from long range, hitting half of her six 3-point attempts to lead FRHS with nine points. Aleigha Jenkins followed with seven points, and Brooke Gaerke tallied six points to go with her six rebounds.
Lauren Jackson had a game-high 10 points for Celina.