Second quarter struggles

There are stories like those of Achilles or Superman, where the main character has a sole weakness. For the former it was his heel, while the latter’s weakness is kryptonite.

The Patriots have had different “kryptonites” depending on the day.

On Dec. 9, it was the 3-point shot.

This time it was turnovers.

After a strong start against the Class 3A No. 6 Delta Eagles, the Jay County High School basketball team was plagued by turnovers as it couldn’t keep control of the game that it lost 47-26 on Friday.

“When you turn it over out front, you don’t have any way to defend it,” JCHS coach Jerry Bomholt said. “We just don't understand the possession of a basketball, and how important that is.

“We can’t play again like we did, and dig ourselves a hole, so we’ve got work to do.”

The Patriots (2-4) ended up turning the ball over 18 times in the game. Six of those came in the second quarter, when Jay County went on another quarter-long scoring drought.

JCHS only managed to get off four shots in the period, and none of them found the basket until Gradin Swoveland hit his only shot of the game on a pull-up, fade-away jumper with seconds left to go in the half.

This is the third time in as many games where Jay County was held to three-or-less points in the second quarter. It was blanked against Fort Recovery on Dec. 2, and only had three points – all of them scored by Liam Garringer – against New Castle on Dec. 9.

During the drought, the Eagles (5-1) took full advantage of Jay County being unable to effectively get back and set its defense.

“We got deflections, got some live ball turnovers and got in the open floor some,” said Delta coach Mark Detweiler about how the Eagles turned this up in the second quarter. “(Jay County) needed a half-court game and we didn’t want that. So at some point, you need to find a stretch in the game where you can play how you want to play.

“So we finally got the tempo where we needed at times.”

Delta scored 14-straight points in the quarter, nine of which came from D’Amare Hood.

The Delta senior led all scorers with 25 in the game, and went on his own seven-point run to cap off the Eagles’ hot second quarter. It started with a turnaround jump shot from the elbow on an assist from Jonny Manor, a three from the wing that was also assisted by Manor and a transition layup when he stole the ball, taking it coast to coast.

Once the Patriots got down, they never were able to find the spark needed to catch back up, scoring four points in the third and 11 in the fourth. The Patriots’ leading scorer, Westly Bihn, had all nine of his points in the fourth after finally getting some paint touches and knocking down 3-of-3 free throws.

Despite turning things up in the final period, the Patriots couldn’t keep up, as Delta scored 18 with Hood adding nine more on a three, and three transition baskets that included a break-away slam dunk.

Other scores came off of solid ball movement, and sneaking behind Jay County’s half-court trapping zone.

“D’Mare really got going for us,” Detweiler said. “Our ball movement was better as the game went on. We found some layups and got behind the zone a little bit more. We got touches along the baseline, which the first half we just didn’t, so we just cleaned some things up.”

Jay County’s best quarter of the night came in the opening frame, when they held Delta to only four points on 2-for-12 shooting.

Turning the ball over on the first four possessions, Jay County didn’t get a shot up until there was 3 minutes, 53 seconds remaining in the quarter when Garringer converted a layup on a fake dribble hand off. It got three more buckets to close the quarter a pair of jumpers in the lane by Trevin Dunnington and a three-point play scored by Ben Crouch.

“The hard part is, the first quarter was 9-4, but if we don’t turn it over, we could get it to be 15-4,” Bomholt said. “That makes it a lot different.

“I tried to make them understand that (Delta) is better than us at every position. So in order to beat them, you have to frustrate them. The first quarter we did that. We played really slow.”

After the frustrating start to the season, Bomholt is starting to consider giving some younger players opportunities to work into the rotation.

To finish off the game, Bomholt subbed in sophomores Carter Fugiett and Cole Forthofer and freshman Jayden Comer who saw his first varsity minutes of his career.

“When you give a team five chances – and then basically these guys have had five chances – well, I think then we got to try to go with some younger kids,” Bomholt said. “We looked at some of them there at the end and we're not going to seriously take a better look at who's playing. is getting minutes and then we'll kind of go from there.”

Junior varsity

The Patriots got lit up from distance as they fell to the Eagles 49-44 on Friday.

Jay County (4-2) had no answers for Lucas Bragg in the first half, who scored all 18 of Delta’s first quarter points and six of 10 in the second. Bragg finished the game with 10 threes. A pair of fourth-quarter free throws helped him to his final tally of 32 points. 

The offense slowed down for Delta in the third quarter, allowing Jay County to cut the deficit to single digits going into the final period.

Carter Fugiett – one of the Patriots’ leading scorers with 10 points – scored eight points in the fourth quarter, including two late threes from the right wing. 

Jay County had 19 points in the final period, but Delta hit 13-of-16 free throws to maintain control and thwart the comeback effort.

Cole Forthofer matched Fugiett with 10 points, while Eli Dirksen (nine), Kade Sommers (eight) and Jayden Comer (seven) put up points as well.

Freshmen

The Jay County freshman team was the only team to prevail against Delta, winning 45-37.

The Patriots (1-1) got off to a six-point first-half lead  by only allowing the Eagles to score twice in the second quarter.

Delta made a fourth-quarter comeback by scoring 16 points in the final period. Chase Phillips 11 of his game-high 19 points in the period, but was forced out of the game after picking up his fifth foul in the quarter, ending the comeback effort.

Ben Barnett led Jay County with 13 points, nine of which came from 3-pointers.

Boston Barnett and Brock Wasson added 10 points each as well.