Host Lady Pacers hold off Big Walnut in 41-36 OCC tilt

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

With the out­come in doubt, the Lady Pac­ers exe­cuted down the stretch …

Delaware Hayes (6–10, 5–5 OCC) sank 10 of 16 free throws in the final 3:51 to hold off fast-closing Big Wal­nut (10–7, 4–6 OCC) en route to a 41–36 Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion vic­tory over the Golden Eagles Thurs­day night in Delaware.

Erin Margraf’s Pac­ers held an 8-point, 31–23 advan­tage on Monique Martinez’s layin with 4:41 remain­ing in the game before the Golden Eagles’ Sky­lar Fleak ignited a 9–3 run with a 3-point play and a layin to nar­row the gap to 31–28 at the 4:08 mark. With 2:29 left, BW was within a bas­ket at 34–32 on a pair of Sara Petty free throws.

That’s when Hayes cashed in at the char­ity stripe, scor­ing their final 8 points at the line. Julie Bauer and Kris­ten McMillen each hit 3 of 4 free throws in the final 1:35 to put the game in the win col­umn. BW closed the mar­gin to 39–36 on Makenna Hammond’s trey with 9.2 sec­onds on the clock, but McMillen iced the vic­tory with two free throws with 4.2 sec­onds to play.

“I was pleased with our exe­cu­tion with the game on the line,” Mar­graf said. “We strug­gled with turnovers against Big Walnut’s solid defense, but when it counted we made the plays we needed to make to be suc­cess­ful … that’s all you can ask for.”

The Pac­ers com­mit­ted 24 turnovers in 56 pos­ses­sions, but made up for their mis­takes by shoot­ing 40.7 per­cent (11-for-27) from the field.

While Bauer and McMillen led Hayes with 10 and 9 points, respec­tively, Mar­graf praised the play of her bench as 10 play­ers broke into the scor­ing col­umn for the Pacers.

“We had play­ers come in off the bench to pick up our starters … that was a big dif­fer­ence in the out­come for us,” she said.

Miriam Abur­maieleh, Allissa Beard and Mar­tinez backed Bauer and McMillen with 4 points apiece.

Big Walnut’s Bob Scott cited the Golden Eagles’ incon­sis­tency in their offense, i.e. shoot­ing per­cent­age (11-for-40, 27.5 per­cent) and turnovers (22 in 57 possessions).

“We did not shoot the ball well and we made too many turnovers,” he said.

And there was the mat­ter of 23 per­sonal fouls, 17 in the sec­ond half, that saw Emily Chucta, Stephanie Adkins and Fleak foul out out in the final 2:16.

“In all my years of coach­ing I don’t remem­ber ever hav­ing three play­ers foul out,” Scott said.

A con­se­quence of com­mit­ting 23 per­son­als was the fact that the Pac­ers made 17 of 31 free throws for the game, includ­ing 10 of 18 in the final 8 min­utes. The Golden Eagles were 7-for-11 at the line.

Fleak led all scor­ers with 14 points. Petty fol­lowed with 10 points while Chucta and Ham­mond fol­lowed with 5 points apiece. BW, led by Fleak’s 10 rebounds, claimed a 29–28 edge on the glass. Bauer pulled down 6 missed shots for Hayes.

With the vic­tory, Hayes swept the sea­son series with Big Wal­nut. The Pac­ers took the season’s first meet­ing 39–37 back on Decem­ber 14 in Sunbury.

BIG WALNUT 37, BEXLEY 30 — The Golden Eagles over­came an 18–15 half­time deficit by outscor­ing the vis­it­ing Lions 22–12 in the sec­ond half in last Tuesday’s (Jan­u­ary 22) non-conference vic­tory at Big Wal­nut High School.

Big Wal­nut (11–6) relied on a bal­anced attack and a strong second-half defense to notch its 11th win of the sea­son. Sky­lar Fleak led the Golden Eagles with 9 points while Emily Chucta and Stephanie Adkins fol­lowed with 7 points apiece. Sara Petty and Makenna Ham­mond each con­tributed 5 points with Saman­tha Klinedinst clos­ing out the scor­ing with 4 points.

The Golden Eagle defend­ers lim­ited Bex­ley (8–10) to just 10 field goals with 9 of the Lions’ points com­ing from the free throw line. Lydia Lake paced the vis­i­tors with a game-high 12 points. She was joined in dou­ble fig­ures by Elise Tor­rence who tal­lied 10 points. Meghan Heck­man and Bri Stew­art rounded out the Lions’ scor­ing with 4 points apiece.

Posted by Gary Henery on Jan 30 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.