Petty, Fleak lead Big Walnut past Mt. Vernon 49-36 in OCC clash

By GARY HENERY

News Man­afging Editor

In a game of scor­ing runs, the Golden Eagles put together the one that counted.

Junior post Sara Petty led a 10–2 early fourth-quarter run that car­ried Big Wal­nut to 49–36 Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion vic­tory over Mount Ver­non on Senior Par­ents Night Fri­day in Sunbury.

Bob Scott’s Golden Eagles, who never trailed in the con­test, took a 33–28 into the final 8 min­utes against the fast-closing Yel­low Jack­ets who closed the third period with an 11–5 run to wipe out a 28–17 deficit and pull within 5 of the lead.

That’s when Petty took over. Petty came off the bench to start the final period and scored all four of Big Walnut’s (12–7, 6–6 OCC) bas­kets. She ignited the run with a fast-break layin and fol­lowed with a pair of layups off inbound passes before cap­ping the spree with a short jumper to give the Golden Eagles a 43–30 lead with 4:16 to play, match­ing the host’s biggest lead of the night, a 24–17 advan­tage on a bas­ket by junior Sky­lar Fleak with 48 sec­onds into the sec­ond period.

Mount Ver­non (11–7, 5–6 OCC), pres­sur­ing Big Wal­nut into four suc­ces­sive turnovers, would close to within 7 of the lead at 43–36 on junior Sierra Basista’s bas­ket with 2:48 to play, but that would prove to be the Yel­low Jack­ets’ last points of the game. The Golden Eagles closed out the game with a 6–0 run on a Fleak layin off a break and four free throws by senior Stephanie Adkins.

“We played together as a team, both offen­sively and defen­sively,” Scott said. “We worked for good shots against an aggres­sive Mount Ver­non defense, and when we got open we took advan­tage of our opportunities.”

Big Wal­nut was 5-for-7 from the field in the final period while con­vert­ing 6 of its 7 free throw attempts. The Golden Eagle run was aided by a tech­ni­cal foul on Mount Ver­non coach Joe Rucker. The tech­ni­cal resulted in two free throws by senior Saman­tha Klinedinst and an ensu­ing bas­ket by Petty to give BW a 39–28 lead with 6:09 remaining.

Fleak paced Big Wal­nut with game-highs of 12 points and 8 rebounds. Petty fol­lowed Fleak in dou­ble fig­ures with 11 points. Senior Emily Chucta fol­lowed with 8 while sopho­more Makenna Ham­mond and Klinedinst con­tributed 7 points apiece.

“Sara and Sky­lar did a nice job inside against a good Mount Vernon’s defense,” Scott noted. “Over­all, I thought our offense did a nice job.”

Big Wal­nut shot 50 per­cent (17-for-34) for the game while mak­ing good on 13 of 18 (72.2 per­cent) free throws. While the Golden Eagles claimed a 32–27 edge off the glass, they off­set that mar­gin by turn­ing the ball over 27 times against the Yel­low Jacket press.

Sopho­more Rachel Parks paced the Yel­low Jack­ets with 11 points fol­lowed by Basista with 14 points. Sopho­more Sammy Cun­ning­ham added 9 points while pulling down a team-high 5 rebounds.

“Defen­sively, we were pretty con­sis­tent, espe­cially in the fourth quar­ter when we held Mount Ver­non to 8 points,” Scott said.

Scott was backed by the Yel­low Jack­ets’ fourth-quarter stats. Mount Ver­non was 2-for-13 (15.4 per­cent) from the field while turn­ing the ball over 8 times and los­ing the bat­tle of the boards to the Golden Eagles by a 10 to 5 margin.

Mount Ver­non shot 25.5 per­cent (12-for-47) for the game, adding 9 of 11 (81.8 per­cent) free throws. The Yel­low Jack­ets com­mit­ted a total of 25 turnovers.

With the win, Big Wal­nut swept the sea­son series with Mount Ver­non. The Golden Eagles ral­lied for 24 points in the fouth quar­ter to edge the Yel­low Jack­ets 43–37 on Decem­ber 21 at Mount Vernon.

Big Wal­nut returned to action Tues­day, trav­el­ing to New Albany for a OCC matchup with the host Eagles.

BIG WALNUT 39, WATKINS MEMORIAL 31 — The Golden Eagles, com­ing off a tough con­fer­ence road loss at Delaware Hayes, responded with a solid road win last Tues­day night (Jan­u­ary 29) over the host War­riors at Pataskala.

Cling­ing to a 24–22 lead enter­ing the fourth quar­ter, Big Wal­nut responded by outscor­ing Watkins Memo­r­ial 15–9 over the final eight min­utes to post the 8-point Ohio Cap­i­tal Con­fer­ence Cap­i­tal Divi­sion victory.

Big Wal­nut (11–7, 5–6 OCC) was led by the double-figure point pro­duc­tion of senior Emily Chucta, who led all scor­ers with 12 points, and sopho­more Makenna Ham­mond, who fol­lowed with 10 points. junior Sky­lar Fleak and senior Stephanie Adkins fol­lowed with 6 and 5 points, respectively.

Watkins Memo­r­ial (4–13, 1–9 OCC) was led by senior point guard Lou Nickel who was the lone War­rior in dou­ble fig­ures with 10 points.

Posted by Gary Henery on Feb 6 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.