The Lady Knights improved their winning streak to six games last week as they defeated South Harrison and Midland Trail. They now own an overall record of 6-2, and are 4-1 in conference play.
Tuesday the Lady Knights met the South Harrison Hawks for the second time this season in a conference matchup. About this matchup, Coach Jason Hunt said, “The first time the Knights played the Hawks we defeated them by 27 points. I knew this matchup would be a lot different as the Hawks are always a team that improves throughout the season. The Knights had a rough shooting night, missing a lot of shots in the paint and missing open layups as well, but their defense was key to pulling out another victory. After the first quarter the Knights were only up 6-0, and most of those points came from the foul line.”
Coach Hunt continued to note that “some defensive adjustments and substituting in some players that better matched the Hawks squad” led the Knights to get some defensive stops and add 10 more points in the second quarter. The Knights went into halftime leading 16-3.
Third quarter action repeated much of the first as the Knights continued to struggle offensively, “missing several putbacks from offensive rebounds and a few key open layups.” The Knights managed only 6 points in the third quarter. However, with what Coach Hunt termed “great defensive play,” the Knights were able to maintain their lead and ended up winning the game with a final score of 31-7.
Almost half of the Knights’ points came from the foul line as they shot 13 of 25, which even at that was a very low percentage, their coach noted. Leading the Knights in scoring was Emily Short with 18 points. Zoey McQuain had 6, Lydia Gerwig 3, and Ava Nettles and McKenzie Conrad 2 each.
In the second game of the week, the Knights faced Midland Trail in the first meeting ever for these two teams. This was a varsity only matchup. Coach Hunt pointed out that the Lady Knights were focused and ready to play that night and came out firing on all cylinders. He said, “They executed their game plan to perfection in the first quarter on offense and defense and found themselves up 21-3. With a nice lead after the first we scaled back our defensive pressure and tried to focus on running our offensive sets and executing our plays”. The Knights went into the half leading by a score of 26-4.
During halftime, the Knights made a few adjustments to their offensive and defensive sets since, their coach noted, “It was a great night to work on some different things and see what worked best.” The third and fourth quarters were “a mirror image of the first half as the Knights were able to get stop after stop on defense and ran their offense to perfection.” With seconds to go in the fourth quarter the Knights capped off their win by the netting of a corner 3 by Kendall Mollohan. The Knights finished the game with a 57-11 win.
Leading the scoring attack for the Knights was Short with 17 points, including 3 of 4 from the foul line. Gerwig had and 8 points and was 2 of 4 from the line, Kendall Mollohan added 8 and was 3 of 6 from the line. Audrina Facemire scored 8 points and pulled down a game high 8 rebounds, and McKenzie Conrad scored 7 and shot 1 of 2 from the line. McQuain added 4 points, Ava Nettles and Adeline Lowther put up 2 points each, and Aubrey Pritt was 1 of 2 from the line.
“The Lady Knights are improving with every game. They are really starting to work together as a team, and it showed in the Trail game as every player that suited up for the Knights scored. Our younger players have been gaining a lot of valuable varsity experience this season and that is going to go a long ways come tournament time,” Coach Hunt commented.
The Knights sit one game behind Summersville in the conference and are currently tied with Clay for second place. Their first matchup against Clay comes next week. The Knights will have a very busy game schedule for the next couple weeks as they play six games. On Wednesday they were scheduled to travel to Walton, Thursday they go to Clay, and end up back at home on Friday against Richwood.
See photos and additional coverage of BCMS Knights’ sports on pages 6 and 8 of this issue.