It's raining threes

Tuesday was about threes.
It was the third loss of the season for the Jay County High School girls basketball team — a late free throw lifted the Fort Wayne Concordia Cadets to a 47-46 victory — but there was another three that was more important.
A 3-pointer.
In the third quarter.
And the time was in the 30s.
With 31 seconds remaining on the clock, Jay County senior Lyla Muhlenkamp let go a 3-point shot from the right corner that swished through the hoop. It was her 40th 3-pointer this year to set a new single-season record.
After the shot went in, she knew of the accomplishment, but her head was elsewhere. She was worrying about the big picture.
The Cadets.
“My mind was honestly all over the place because I knew I had to get back on defense,” Muhlenkamp said of the record-setting triple that tied the game at 34. She tied Sara Garringer’s mark of 39 3-pointers in the first quarter, and added her 41st triple in the fourth for good measure. “But I was also excited that I had just broken another record.
“Secretly I had a very short celebration in my head.”
Muhlenkamp’s feat came three weeks to the day after she made a dozen 3-pointers to shatter Cassandra Huelskamp’s record of seven triples in a game.
She knew she was approaching Garringer’s mark too.
“I knew I only had to make two and it was my goal to get it tonight,” she said, noting that she wanted to set the record Saturday against Fort Recovery but her playing time was limited because she got in foul trouble. “I could not have done it without my team or my coaches. My teammates do an excellent job of setting me up and getting me the ball when I have the hot hand and I want to thank them for that.”
Jay County coach Kirk Comer, whose team is now 12-3 and hosts the Bellmont Squaws on Friday, wasn’t aware at the time Muhlenkamp set the record.
“I think she’s having an outstanding season,” he said. Muhlenkamp finished with 11 points, second only to classmate Ava Kunkler’s game-high 13. Taylor Homan added nine points and Hanna Ault chipped in with six. “I’m happy for (Muhlenkamp). I expect her to have several more good games.”
In the third quarter, Concordia (7-9) made four 3-pointers to help overcome a three-point deficit to the Patriots. Sylare Starks hit three of them, with the first tying the score at 24, the second giving the Cadets a 27-26 lead and the third a 34-31 advantage.
Following Muhlenkamp’s triple, fellow Cadet freshman Carissa Garcia made a 3-pointer from the right corner to end the period and give Concordia a 37-34 lead.
“That was kind of huge,” said Concordia coach Dave Miller. “In a low-scoring game, that’s big.”
But they were not as big as Addison Gepfert at the free-throw line and Shania Kelly under the rim during the final moments.
Gepfert tied the game with 15.3 seconds in the fourth quarter when she split a pair of free throws, and after a Jay County turnover, she was sent to the line after absorbing a hard foul from JCHS senior Abby Wendel with 3.9 seconds remaining.
With the score tied at 46, Gepfert made the first free throw. The second was off the mark, but Kelly grabbed the offensive rebound — her game-high 10th — to seal the victory.
Gepfert had a team-high 12 points. Kelly added 11 points, and Brooke Macke added eight.
“We made enough,” Miller said of his team at the free-throw line. The Cadets were 11-of-14 from the stripe, with two of those misses in the final seconds of the game.
“What I’m really disappointed in is I thought we weren’t ready to go from the beginning,” Comer said. “We didn’t shoot the ball very well (17-of-49 for 34.7 percent) and when you don’t shoot the ball very well you have to rebound it. We didn’t rebound it like we normally do.
“I thought the girls played hard, but when you’re not mentally prepared then sometimes it doesn’t matter how hard you play and that’s what happened tonight.”

Junior varsity
The Patriots remained undefeated with a 42-32 victory over the Cadets.
Jay County, which moves to 15-0, had a two-point lead (9-7) after the opening quarter but exploded for 16 points in the second to take a 25-15 advantage into halftime.
The Cadets cut into the deficit to trail 32-26 after three quarters, but the Patriots had a 10-6 advantage in the final frame.
Hanna Dillon and Gwen Omestead led Jay County with 10 and nine points respectively. Audrey Shreve followed with eight points and Briana Muhlenkamp added five points.
Concordia’s Olivia Hill led all players with 13 points.