Lady Braves cruise past Golden Eagles, 68-28

By ERIC CLINE

For The Sun­bury News

Olen­tangy girls head coach John Feasel made it a point after last Tuesday’s (Decem­ber 4) non-league game against Granville to get the defen­sive effort started early in their Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion home meet­ing with Big Walnut.

The Braves forced 10 first-quarter turnovers and held the Golden Eagles to just 9 shots and 2 points in the period before fin­ish­ing with a resound­ing 68–28 vic­tory Fri­day night at Olen­tangy High School.

But even bet­ter, the Olen­tangy (4–0, 2–0 OCC Cap­i­tal) win was the 100th vic­tory in Feasel’s career and comes nearly nine years after record­ing his first career win — also at home against Big Wal­nut (2–1, 1–1) — on Decem­ber 30, 2003.

“All credit to the girls,” Feasel said. “The girls played great, and that’s come to be expected here at Olen­tangy. It was good to watch.”

“I told our girls after the game not to feel too bad,” Big Wal­nut head coach Bob Scott, him­self a mem­ber of the 100-win club, said. “Olen­tangy is prob­a­bly one of the top five teams in the Cen­tral Dis­trict and might be one of the top 10 teams in the state. We just got beat by a very good team.”

The defense got things started. Olen­tangy didn’t score until the 5:39 mark of the first quar­ter, but still opened by scor­ing the first 14 points of the period, thanks to the defense.

“Defen­sively, we were stel­lar tonight,” Feasel said. “I think it was a com­bi­na­tion of defen­sive pres­sure and, I think, we con­fused them a lit­tle, and that was the game plan. I wish we could have scored a lit­tle more in the first quar­ter, but over­all, when you hold them to 9 points, that’s a good first half.”

“We only had 18 shots in the first half,” Scott said. “We didn’t get many shots at all, and our kids hadn’t seen them play. We (the coaches) had seen them play, we know how they run and we know how their post play­ers are; they’re good.”

The turnovers were the most impor­tant part. Big Wal­nut had trou­ble get­ting any offen­sive rhythm in the open­ing period after the 10 first-period mis­cues. The Golden Eagles fin­ished with 28 turnovers on the night, had just 39 shots total in the game, and did not score until senior wing Emily Chucta hit in jumper in the key with 11 sec­onds left in the open­ing quarter.

“I think our pres­sure cre­at­ing those turnovers was impor­tant,” Feasel said. “We need the ball to be able to score. Our goal is to get shots on every possession.”

The Braves cer­tainly had more chances to score than Big Wal­nut. After their 14–2 first quar­ter, Olen­tangy outscored the Golden Eagles 17–7 and led 31–9 at the break, then scored 25 points in the third quar­ter to Big Walnut’s 9, tak­ing a 56–18 lead into the final period.

Fresh­man wing Kelly Meade had the best game of her career so far, fin­ish­ing with a game-high 21 points off the bench, includ­ing all three of the Braves’ 3-point goals, adding 3 rebounds and an assist.

“Kelly’s start­ing to play and feel more com­fort­able, and we’re going to need that,” Feasel said. “I look at Brooke Zwayer sit­ting on the bench and real­ize the best thing hap­pen­ing right now is we’re get­ting con­fi­dence from every­one else, and when Brooke comes back, that’s eight kids we have that can really play and score.”

“Kelly is a good player,” Scott said. “Some­times she was mak­ing shots when we couldn’t play any bet­ter defense. We had a hand in her face and she’s still mak­ing shots, and when they get on a roll like that, there’s not a lot you can do to stop it.”

Senior post Megan Bei­del­man added 16 points and 8 rebounds while seniors Lydia Hyburg and Katie Heath had 10 points apiece, Hyburg adding 5 rebounds and an assist and Heath con­tribut­ing 2 rebounds and 2 assists. Sopho­more Mor­gan Hor­vath also had a solid game with 5 points, 5 boards and a game-high 7 assists.

Sopho­more Makenna Ham­mond topped the Golden Eagles with 10 points off the bench, includ­ing the team’s three 3-pointers. Junior post Sky­lar Fleak added 8 points, a game-high 11 rebounds and 2 assists, Chucta fin­ished with 6 points, 4 rebounds and 2 assists, and junior Han­nah Sea­well had 4 points for Big Walnut.

BIG WALNUT 49, LICKING HEIGHTS 29 — The Golden Eagles found their defen­sive form after sur­ren­der­ing 17 first quar­ter points to the vis­it­ing Hor­nets, allow­ing just 12 points the rest of the way en route to last Tuesday’s 20-point non-conference deci­sion over Lick­ing Heights.

Down 17–9 after one, the Golden Eagles (2–0) outscored the Hor­nets 8–2 in the sec­ond quar­ter to close the deficit to 19–17 at the inter­mis­sion. Bob Scott’s re-energized squad came back and outscored Lick­ing Heights 32–10 in the sec­ond half, 11–4 in the third and 21–6 in the fourth, for BW’s sec­ond vic­tory of the young season.

Junior post Sky­lar Fleak led the way for the Golden Eagles with 12 points and eight rebounds in the win. Senior guard Saman­tha Klinedinst fol­lowed Fleak in dou­ble fig­ures with 10 points while junior post Sara Petty fol­lowed with 9 points.

Posted by Gary Henery on Dec 12 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.