Golden Eagle girls ace Amanda 41-27 in Division II Sectional final

By GARY HENERY

News Man­ag­ing Editor

The Golden Eagle pres­sure defense made an early post­sea­son impression …

Eighth-seeded Big Wal­nut (14–9), hold­ing Amanda-Clearcreek to 8 field goals while forc­ing 19 turnovers, opened Divi­sion II Cen­tral Dis­trict play with a 41–27 Sec­tional Final vic­tory over the vis­it­ing Aces last Wednes­day (Feb­ru­ary 20) night in Sunbury.

With the vic­tory, the Golden Eagles advanced to yesterday’s (Wednes­day, Feb­ru­ary 27) Dis­trict semi­fi­nals where they will take on top-seeded Colum­bus East­moor Acad­emy (20–4) at 8 p.m. at New Albany High School. The War­riors advanced with a 65–31 Sec­tional final deci­sion over Hamil­ton Town­ship at East­moor Academy.

Big Wal­nut led Amanda-Clearcreek from the open­ing tip, shut­ting out the Aces out from the field in the first quar­ter in tak­ing a 10–5 lead thanks to a pair of threes from sopho­more Makenna Ham­mond and senior Stephanie Adkins. The Aces, who were 0-for-8 from the floor while com­mit­ting 8 turnovers in the open­ing 8 min­utes, never recovered.

After junior Sky­lar Fleak scored from the lane to push the Big Wal­nut lead to 12–5 off the second-period tip, Amanda-Clearcreek (11–12) net­ted its first bas­ket of the game on a short jumper by senior Bekah Legg at the 7:27 mark to keep the Aces within five of the lead.

How­ever, that was a close as it would get as the Golden Eagles, thanks to Adkins’ who counted her sec­ond trey of the game to go with a pair of free throws, outscored the Aces 7–2 over the final 7 min­utes of the sec­ond quar­ter to take a 10-point, 19–9 lead into the intermission

For the half, Big Wal­nut was 7-for-23 from the field (30.4 per­cent) while com­mit­ting 5 turnovers com­pared to Amanda’s 2-for-18 per­cent­age (22.2 per­cent) with 8 turnovers.

“We played great defense,” Big Wal­nut head coach Bob Scott said. “When we scouted Amanda-Clearcreek we felt we would have suc­cess with our full-court press — and to a great extent I think we were successful.”

The Golden Eagles’ full-court pres­sure forced 19 Ace turnovers, mis­takes the Golden Eagles would con­vert into 15 points.

Big Wal­nut came back out and opened up a 16-point, 28–12 lead, thanks to a a pair of threes by Ham­mond and a Fleak layin off a steal, The Aces would pull no closer than 11 of the lead the rest of the way.

“We were dis­ap­pointed in our shoot­ing tonight,” Scott said. “We missed a lot of open shots, espe­cially layins. That’s some­thing we will have to cor­rect if we expect to go deep into the tournament.”

Big Wal­nut, which fin­ished the night shoot­ing 33.3 per­cent (15-for-45) from the field was led by Ham­mond, who counted three treys, and Fleak with 11 points apiece. Adkins, with her two threes fol­lowed with 8 points. The Golden Eagles were 5-for-9 (55.6 per­cent) from behind the arc. BW was 6-for-11 (54.5 per­cent) at the line. The Golden Eagles tuned the ball over 11 times with the loss of 4 points.

Junior Kacee Saly­ers led Amanda-Clearcreek with a game-high 14 points. Legg fol­lowed with 6 points. No other Ace scored more than 2 points. Amanda fin­ished the night with an 8-for-37, 21.6 shoot­ing per­cent­age. The Aces, who were 0-for-9 in 3-point tries, were 11-for-17 (64.7 per­cent) at the line.

Amanda, thanks to 5-foot-11 senior for­ward Car­lie Young’s game-best 13 boards, fin­ished with a 40–31 edge on the boards. Fleak led the Golden Eagles with 7 rebounds.

Posted by Gary Henery on Feb 27 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.