FR girls get turnovers, own glass to defeat Jay County

FORT RECOVERY — Alexis Sibray started out on fire.

Once she cooled off and the Indians were able to implement their defensive strategy, the trajectory of the game flipped.

Fort Recovery High School’s girls basketball team forced 21 turnovers with its pressure defense, Cameron Muhlenkamp limited Jay County leading scorer Hallie Schwieterman and the Indians dominated the glass for a 59-32 victory over the Patriots.

“We’re playing really well right now,” said FRHS coach Tyler Dietsch. “Our last couple games, we made some adjustments and things are really coming together for us. Defensively, we’re able to put some pressure on and it leads to easy offensive opportunities for us. Everything just feeds off of that.”

After playing well in the opening quarter, Jay County (3-4) gave the ball away eight times in the second. It was 0-for-5 with five turnovers before Schwieterman recorded its first points of the period on free throws.

The Patriots continued to struggle to find consistent offense in the second half, getting outscored 35-13.

“If we could have played four quarters like we played the first two, I think we would have been in a position to possibly win it,” said JCHS coach Sherri McIntire, whose team suffered its third consecutive loss. “Two things that are so important to basketball — rebound and turnovers — we’re not very good at either one of those right now. …

“They just pointed out our weaknesses. Obviously they killed us on the boards. …

“Turnovers too. We’re just not being very fundamentally sound right now.”

Sibray hit a pair of 3-pointers for the Patriots as they built a 12-6 lead, but the game shifted after Kennedy Muhlenkamp (16 points) hit a pair of free throws with 2:51 remaining in the opening period. Finally able to get into its full-court pressure defense — Fort Recovery sought to force the ball to the sidelines for a trap and then take away the pass back to the middle — the home team closed the quarter on an 8-1 run and then scored the first eight points of the second to take control.

A couple of late buckets from Schwieterman and Amelia Heath had Jay County back within five at halftime, but the Indians continued to be effective after the break. They pushed to a 13-point advantage at the end of the third quarter and added runs of 7-0 and 9-0 to push ahead by as many as 29 in the fourth.

While Fort Recovery (2-4) relied on its full-court pressure to force turnovers, it turned to Cameron Muhlenkamp to limit Schwieterman in the half court. Cameron Muhlenkamp heavily shaded Schwieterman in an effort to take away any drives to her right and generally limited her opportunities. Schwieterman, who came into the game averaging 20.3 points, was limited to four in the first half and finished with 13.

“She obviously runs their offense a lot. She’s their main scorer,” said Cameron Muhlenkamp. “I knew that in order to win this game I was going to have to limit her … What coach tells us to do is force them left, get a hand in their face, and that’s what I did. …

“She’s obviously a strong player, so she is able to go left and right, but most girls are a lot weaker on their left side, so if I kept her to the left, put a hand in her face, she couldn't take that deep shot and it was a little bit harder for her to take a drive …”

The other area of dominance for the Indians was the glass. They out-rebounded Jay County 49-29 including grabbing 21 offensive boards that led to 18 more field-goal opportunities. Karlie Niekamp had a team-high 13 rebounds, Kennedy Muhlenkamp grabbed a dozen and Makenna Huelskamp finished with 10.

Extra possessions helped the Indians have their best offensive output of the year — their previous scoring high came in a 50-39 win over Indian Lake — with Bridgett Homan (15), Huelskamp (11) and Niekamp (10) joining Kennedy Muhlenkamp in double figures.

“That obviously is huge,” said Dietsch. “We had a size advantage. They had the tallest girl out on the floor, but whenever she had to come off the floor and they went with that smaller group, that was definitely an emphasis for us … crash the boards, get every second-chance point that we could, and really focus on boxing out and not giving them any second opportunities.

“That was a big focus for us over the last couple days preparing for this game … More so than our size it was how aggressive and physical we could go after those boards …”

Schwieterman’s 13 points were the team high for the Patriots. Sibray followed with 11, eight of which came in the first half.