Chucta powers BW past Lady Barons, 48-36

By ERIC CLINE

For The Sun­bury News

When a team isn’t shoot­ing the lights out of the gym, turnovers become more and more impor­tant to victory.

Such was the case last Tues­day (Decem­ber 11) night as the Big Wal­nut Golden Eagles cleaned up their pos­ses­sions and used runs in the final three quar­ters for a 48–36 non-league vic­tory over the Buck­eye Val­ley Barons at Buck­eye Val­ley High School.

Both Big Wal­nut (3–1) and Buck­eye Val­ley (3–2) had dif­fi­culty hold­ing onto the ball in the open­ing period, each com­mit­ting five turnovers, but the Barons were still able to knock down three-point goals and take a 12–4 lead after one period.

After that, things changed dra­mat­i­cally. The Golden Eagles had just 12 turnovers after that, includ­ing just six in the final two quar­ters, while Buck­eye Val­ley com­mit­ted 23 mis­cues in that same span, includ­ing 10 in a sec­ond quar­ter that saw Big Wal­nut come back to take a 15–14 lead mid­way through the sec­ond quarter.

“We’re still work­ing on some things, but I thought we did a bet­ter job of not turn­ing the ball over,” Big Wal­nut coach Bob Scott said. “We had a lit­tle dif­fer­ent lineup in tonight and still did it a lit­tle too much in the begin­ning, but we started play­ing bet­ter defense and run­ning the offense a lit­tle better.”

“We stopped tak­ing care of the bas­ket­ball, which led to them pick­ing up a few easy points,” Buck­eye Val­ley coach Lan­don Fraker said. “We didn’t get our rota­tions down quite like we wanted, and their length caused us a lot of prob­lems on the offense end. We did all right defen­sively, but offen­sively, we just had trou­ble scoring.”

The Big Wal­nut defense greatly helped its rever­sal of for­tune, hold­ing the Barons to their three sec­ond quar­ter points and to just seven points total in a span of just over 13 min­utes between the sec­ond and third quar­ters, despite com­mit­ting a rash of fouls.

“We let (Buck­eye Val­ley sopho­more guard (Mad­die) Oberle have a few too many open looks for three, but out­side of that, we did a pretty good job on defense,” Scott said. “We had a few too many fouls. We were a lit­tle aggres­sive on defense and I told the girls (the offi­cials) were call­ing them tight and you can’t be that aggres­sive. On another night, it might be different.”

Mean­while, the Golden Eagles began to find holes in the Baron defense, espe­cially in the sec­ond half. Big Wal­nut broke a 19-all tie with a 9–0 run to take a 28–19 lead with 2:51 left in the third quarter.

“The defense was pretty good in the first half, but after the game, we talked as coaches about what hap­pened to our defense in the sec­ond half,” Fraker said. “It seemed our defense got a lit­tle stag­nant when they started on that third quar­ter run and I should have changed things up a lit­tle to put more pres­sure on them.”

Buck­eye Val­ley would bounce back, how­ever, cut­ting the Big Wal­nut lead to three points, 30–27, just before the end of the quar­ter, then got a three-pointer from Oberle 10 sec­onds into the fourth to trim the deficit to just two points, 32–30.

But the Golden Eagles pushed the lead to dou­ble dig­its after that on a pair of jumpers from senior Emily Chucta, a three-ball from senior Saman­tha Klinedinst and a free throw from sopho­more Makenna Hammond.

Oberle buried another three to stop the Big Wal­nut run, but a foul shot and bucket from junior post Sara Petty negated the triple, and Big Wal­nut went five of eight from the line after that to close things out.

Chucta topped all scor­ers with 16 points, adding four rebounds and two assists.

“I thought Emily played pretty well,” Scott said. “She strug­gled a lit­tle early, espe­cially from the foul line, but once she knocked down a cou­ple shots, we told her to go strong to the bas­ket and get to the line because the refs weren’t going to bail her out.

“We still have to make foul shots and we still have to shoot a lit­tle bet­ter (from the floor), but we got back on a win­ning track. That was the key thing.”

Petty and fel­low junior post Sky­lar Fleak added 9 points each, Petty adding 5 rebounds plus an assist and Fleak haul­ing down 4 boards and dish­ing out a pair of dimes. Ham­mond also had 6 points, 3 assists and 2 rebounds.

Oberle and Linn accounted for 67 per­cent of the Buck­eye Val­ley offense, scor­ing 12 points each and adding 5 rebounds apiece. Linn also had a pair of assists. Junior Cassie Ingram added 5 points, 6 rebounds and 2 assists, while senior Shan­non Steinke led the team with a game-high 7 rebounds plus 4 assists and 3 points.

“We talk a lot about play­ing on our home floor and inten­sity,” Fraker said. “We’ll have a good run then take a step back, but now, it’s time for us to refo­cus. We don’t get a whole lot of time off (before Thurs­day against High­land), then it’s back to work.”

DELAWARE HAYES 39, BIG WALNUT 37 — The Golden Eagles had a chance late, but the vis­it­ing Lady Pac­ers had the final say, split­ting a pair of free throws in the game’s final sec­onds to seal a hard-fought 39–37 Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion win Fri­day night in Sunbury.

Down one with the ball, Big Wal­nut missed a poten­tial game-winning bucket before foul­ing Hayes’ Kris­ten McMillen with 1.2 sec­onds left on the clock. McMillen made just one of the allot­ted two, but it was one more than she needed as the hosts sim­ply ran out of time, unable to get off another shot.

“They shot 12 of 17 from the foul line and we made just seven of our 17,” Big Wal­nut coach Bob Scott said. “We’re com­pet­ing, though, and we had a chance to win it late, which is all we can ask.”

The game couldn’t have been much closer than it was from the open­ing tip to the final buzzer. Hayes jumped ahead 11–7 by the end of the first quar­ter, but Big Wal­nut, thanks to a 10–7 edge in the sec­ond, trailed by just one at halftime.

The third quar­ter was dead even, with the Pac­ers enter­ing the final frame up 28–27 before outscor­ing the Golden Eagles 11–10 to seal the deal.

Junior guard Julie Bauer had a big night for Hayes, clos­ing with a game-high 18 points on the strength of three three-pointers. McMillen and Miriam Abur­maieleh were also solid in the win, fin­ish­ing with nine points each.

Big Wal­nut was led by Sky­lar Fleak, who closed with 14 points, eight rebounds, three steals and three blocks. Makenna Ham­mond was also steady, pour­ing in 10 points in the setback.

Posted by Gary Henery on Dec 19 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.