By Mark Carpenter-
Give everyone a chance to play, don’t show the other coaches too much, and get out healthy. This is the philosophy of most high school basketball coaches when their team are involved in any sort of preseason preview. For the girls basketball squads of Adams County, the Southern Hills Athletic Conference Preview took place on Friday, Nov. 16 at Peebles High School with West Union, North Adams, Manchester, and Peebles all seeing action.
As is tradition, the preview games only consist of two eight-minute quarters, just a quick glimpse for fans of their teams for the upcoming season. After Ripley downed Whiteoak 21-9 in the preview’s opening match up, the first county team to take the floor was the West Union Lady Dragons, who faced off with the Fayetteville Lady Rockets. The Lady Dragons took an early lead thanks to three-pointers from Harley Silvia and Kiersten Rowe and after Fayetteville took the lead, another trey from Rowe made it 9-8 West Union.
A pair of free throws by West Union’s Jaycee Baldwin left the two sides in an 11-1 deadlock after the first period, but as the second stanza began, the Lady Dragons went into a tailspin as Fayetteville wen ton a 12-0 run to open up a 23-11 lead at the 4:37 mark. A free throw by freshman Lexie Rowe and another three-point goal by her older sister stopped the bleeding for the Lady Dragons. A bucket by Baldwin, two McKenzie Kirker free throws, and Kiersten Rowe’s fourth three of the half pulled West Union to within 27-22 as the final horn sounded.
Rowe’s quarter of three-point goals allowed her to lead the Lady Dragons with 12 points in the half, while Fayetteville was paced by 15 big points from freshman Olivia Crawford. West Union did shoot 5 of 6 from the free throw line in the two quarters.
The third match up of the preview pitted two county teams against each other as the North Adams Lady Devils battled the Manchester Lady Greyhounds, two teams who sport a lot of young talent and should be very interesting to watch in the upcoming hardwood season.
Early in the first quarter, a nice step back trey by freshman McKenzie Morrison gave the Lady Hounds an early lead as Manchester head coach Shawn Palmer substituted freely and often in the half of action. Later three-pointers from Darrington White and Emily Sweeney put the Lady Hounds up 9-5, but the Lady Devils turned up a bit of their patented pressure defense and closed out the first quarter on a 9-0 run, getting baskets on three consecutive possessions from Karissa Buttelwerth, Carolyn Shupert, and Braylie Jones, plus an inside score from DeLaney Harper to lead 14-9 after one.
That run extended to 13-0 when the second quarter began with baskets from Harper and Grace McDowell, with the North Adams spurt finally stopped when Morrison hit another three for the Lady Hounds. The Lady Devils answered with Harper scoring inside and then stepping away from the paint to drill a three-point shot, followed by two Buttelwerth free throws and a McDowell trey that made it 28-12 North Adams. Manchester’s final points of the half came on a three-point goal from junior Taylor Morrison as the Lady Devils closed out the two periods with free throws from Brianna Robinson and Harper for a 31-15 victory.
Harper led a balanced North Adams scoring attack with 10 points, followed by McDowell with 8 and Buttelwerth with 6. Manchester scored all of their points from beyond the arc, five three-pointers, two of those from McKenzie Morrison who topped their scorers with 6.
In the fourth match up of the evening, the Lynchburg-Clay Lady Mustangs topped Fairfield 30-19, setting up the final action of the night, as the host Peebles Lady Indians took on the Eastern Lady Warriors, the two teams picked by the SHAC coaches to finish on top of the conference standings.
As expected, the two teams battled close to the vest through the 16 minutes in a defensive struggle with neither team shooting the ball very well. A three-pointer by Eastern’s Camryn Pickerill gave her team an early lead that vanished on a matching trey from Peebles’ Jacey Justice. A three from the corner by Jerilin Toller gave the Lady Indians a 9-7 advantage, but the long distance show continued with Eastern’s Morgan Reynolds connecting to put her team up 10-9 after the first quarter.
The host team opened the second quarter on a 5-0 run, all of those points coming from point guard Kylie Sims, who drained the game’s fifth three-point shot, then got ahead in transition for a layup that put Peebles on top 14-10 with 6:35 left in the half. Those were to be the final points of the night for the home side as the Lady Warriors finished the half on a 9-0 run, getting two buckets from Alexa Pennington and the old-fashioned three-point play from Allison Malott for the 19-14 preview win.
The Lady Warriors were led by Malott’s 5 points, while Jacey Justice and Kylie Sims scored 5 each for the Lady Indians.
Attention now turns to next week’s beginning of the regular season where Peebles will open up at home on Monday, Nov. 16 with the Fayetteville Lady Rockets. Manchester will begin their season that same night, hosting Whiteoak, while Tuesday, Nov. 27 sees two county teams open with each other as the West Union Lady Dragons host the North Adams Lady Devils.
