Patriot girls cruise on early threes and tight D

The Indians couldn’t keep up with the barrage from the perimeter.

The Patriot defense was too much early on as well.

Seven first-half 3-pointers and tight defense carried the Jay County High School girls basketball team to a 58-30 win against state-line rival Fort Recovery on Saturday afternoon.

“Luckily we hit a lot of threes but they were leaving us open on the elbows,” said JCHS coach Kirk Comer, whose team moves to 6-2 on the year and is a perfect 4-0 on its home court. “They were concentrating on trying to contain Renna (Schwieterman). Fortunately for us we knocked down the threes when they left us open. A lot of times it was Izzy (Rodgers) and she did a good of stepping up and taking those shots and putting them down.”

For Fort Recovery, Saturday’s loss is the fourth straight to start the season.

“Jay County is a great team,” coach Holly Gann said. “We knew that coming in. We knew we were defensively going to have to do things to be able to guard (the 3-pointers).

“Obviously, offensively we didn’t help ourselves either with the turnovers.”

The aforementioned Rodgers, a senior guard, hit three first-quarter triples in helping Jay County to a 14-7 lead after eight minutes of play.

Rodgers’ first triple came on an assist from Schwieterman to make it 5-0, and she followed a Madison Dirksen triple with her second trey as the Patriots went up 11-3.

Her third 3-point shot put JCHS on top 14-5. Rodgers added another in the second quarter as she was 4-of-7 from the arc for the game and led all players with 16 points.

Dirksen was 3-of-7 from the perimeter, including three consecutive makes in the first half, on her way to a 14-point game.

Fort Recovery, on the other hand, committed eight turnovers on its first 11 possessions and had 25 total.

“I thought defensively we did a pretty good job,” Comer said. “We kept the ball out of the paint pretty well. We got out and contested on the threes.

“They’re a team that’s rebuilding, but with (Whitley) Rammel I thought we did a good job of doubling her when she got the ball and making it hard for her.”

Jay County, which finished 13th in the Nov. 29 Class 3A coaches’ poll, never really had its lead in jeopardy.

A Dirksen 3-pointer near the midway point of the second quarter gave the Patriots a double-digit lead, and it stayed that way the rest of the game. The Patriots went into halftime ahead 28-14, and led 43-20 at the end of the third quarter.

The margin spread to 30 points, 52-22, barely two minutes into the fourth.

Normally tasked with scoring first, Schwieterman did her damage early by dishing to teammates. She took just two shots in the first half, making one, but registered four assists. She came to life in the second half, though, scoring 13 points after intermission to end with 15 points and seven assists.

Fort Recovery sophomore Mara Pearson led the Indians with nine points, but she was limited to just two over the final two quarters. Rammel scored five points to go with her game-high nine rebounds.



Junior varsity

Jay County had an 18-point first-half lead turn into just two in the second half but the Patriots held on for a 32-27 victory.

A 10-1 margin at the end of the first turned into a 20-2 lead before Fort Recovery made it 20-7 at half. The Indians outscored the Patriots 14-5 in the third quarter before eventually trailing 27-25 midway through the fourth.

Cassie Petro scored 11 points to lead Jay County, which got nine points from Meredith Dirksen and six points from Molly Muhlenkamp.

Saige Leuthold led the Indians with eight points, while Karlie Niekamp finished with eight points. Amalia Martin contributed five points.