Lady Pats continue to dominate Lady Lions; get 59-45 district win
Published 2:13 pm Friday, February 24, 2017
Photo by Nancy Leedy NO, GARRARD COUNTY’S Lauren Patrick didn’t punch Lincoln County’s Jenna King on this first-half play in the 45th District Tournament at Boyle County High School Wednesday. The two, along with Lady Patriot Emma King (34), were battling for a loose ball.
STANFORD — Twenty-nine.
No, that is not the margin of victory in the semifinal game of the 45th District Tournament between Lincoln County and Garrard County. It isn’t the point total for the game’s high-scorer or a team’s rebound total either.
What the number 29 represents is the Lady Patriots’ win-streak total in the Lincoln-Garrard girls’ basketball series.
Lincoln, which hasn’t lost to Garrard since Dec. 11, 2006, racked up the 29th straight victory Wednesday night by defeating the Lady Lions 59-45 in the district semifinals at Boyle County High School.
“I wasn’t aware of that,” Lincoln coach Cassandra McWhorter said. “When you continue to beat a team like we have Garrard over the year’s, it may put an intimidating factor, a little doubt in the players’ minds, but you still have to play the basketball game. You’ve still got to put the ball in the hole and play defense. I don’t think they (Lady Lions) play intimidated. Coach (Scott Latham) has done a good job with those girls over there. I’m just glad that we came out and did what we had to do to win.”
Lincoln (20-8) never trailed in the game, exploding out to a 9-2 lead at the start of the first quarter and leading by as many as 14 points in the first half. Garrard (18-13) whittled the Lady Patriots’ lead down to three points in the third quarter only to have them respond with a 13-0 run to open the game back up.
Lincoln led by as many as 20 points in the fourth quarter before moving on for the win and a spot in Friday’s championship game against Boyle County at 6 p.m.
“We got beat,” said Latham. “We just didn’t take care of the ball tonight. We didn’t shoot it well. We just didn’t have it tonight. We didn’t bring our ‘A’ game that we needed to bring to beat them.”
Three Lady Patriots hit double figures in the win, with Emma King leading the way with 22 points, Kaitlynn Wilks earning a double-double with 12 points and 10 rebounds and Maddy Boyle scoring 10 points.
Boyle picked up the game’s first two points with a layup off her own steal to ignite Lincoln’s 9-2 run. King had two field goals in the run and Jenna King stepped out for a 3-pointer.
Sam Adams, who led Garrard with 18 points, finally connected for her team’s first field goal after four straight misses with just 2:43 left in the first quarter.
There would be plenty of missed shots in the first. Lincoln, which was at 49 percent overall from the field, going 23-for-47, 4-for-14 from 3-points out, was 5-for-13 in the first while Garrard, which finished at 32 percent on 13-for-41 shooting, 5-for-13 from 3, was 1-for-8.
The Lady Patriots led 11-5 at the end of the first.
Neek Hocker hit inside for Garrard to open the second-quarter scoring and make it 11-7 before Lincoln broke on another run. Emma King scored 12 of her 22 points in the second quarter, including her own 10-0 run. She tallied her third bucket in the run with 5:50 left in the first half for the Lady Patriots’ first 10-point lead, 17-7.
Lincoln was up 21-7 by the end of King’s run, the team’s largest lead of the half.
“We came out and played defense the way I wanted to play defense,” McWhorter said. “We’ve really been keying in on our defense and little things that we need to do on the defensive end. I thought our girls did a really good job first half. Until about the last three minutes of the second quarter I was very, very pleased with our defensive effort the whole first half.
And then that leads to offense. When you stop people from scoring, it allows you to push the ball in transition, allows you to get to the paint. We’re 8-for-16 in the paint points in the first half and they’re 4-for-13 That’s a huge statistic.”
Garrard closed the half with their own run, with Lauren Painter getting a bucket and a free throw and Adams scoring an uncontested layup to make it 25-16 at the break.
The Lady Lions continued to rack up points as the second half got underway, with Sis Logan, who finished with 14 points, hitting inside to get the scoring started and Adams following with a 3-pointer and a three-point play to get Garrard within 27-24 with 5:45 on the clock.
“This is a district tournament and anything can happen,” McWhorter said of the rally. “That’s why you play the game. I knew they weren’t going to lay down, even when we got up early. They are going to fight and they are going to scrap because that’s the kind of kids they are and that’s the way he runs his program. They didn’t, but I’m proud of our kids for doing what they had to do to get the ‘W.’”
Garrard got no closer.
Lincoln rolled off 13 staight points to push its lead back to 40-24. Boyle had five points in the scoring surge, Emma King had four and Wilks and Kaitlynn Wilks each had two.
The Lady Patriots’ never relinquished their double-digit lead, using an 11-0 run to open the fourth quarter to put the game out of reach. Boyle drained a quarter-opening 3-pointer then Wilks scored eight straight points for the largest margin of the night, 53-33.
“Give hats off to them (Lady Patriots) for coming out and executing their game plan,” Latham said. “We didn’t execute ours the way we needed to. Too many turnovers in the first half and then battling back, battling back. You use all that energy to battle back and you can’t do that. You run out of gas.”
McWhorter tipped her hat to the Lady Lions for their fight in the district game.
“They’ve got five seniors who I know did not want to lose tonight. They’ve got a very solid team and have played well all year. And they played hard tonight,” she said. “I thought overall we did a really good job of doing the things that we needed to do well to not let certain people be a factor and it got us the ‘W.’”
45th District Tournament
at Boyle Co.
Semifinal Round
1 2 3 4 F
Garrard 5 11 15 14 – 45
Lincoln 11 14 17 17- 59
GARRARD (18-13) – Sam Adams 18, Maddy Day 8, Neek Hocker 2, Sis Logan 14, Lauren Patrick 3.
LINCOLN (20-8) – Emma King 22, Kaitlynn Wilks 12, Maddy Boyle 10, Jenna King 3, Logan Godbey 2, Haley Southerland 4, Trinity Shearer 4, Anna Lane 2.
