By Mark Carpenter-

The girls consolation game of the 2018 McDonald’s Holiday Classic matched up the Manchester Lady Greyhounds and the West Union Lady Dragons, two teams coming off Friday semi-final losses and two team badly in need of victories. This contest belonged to the Lady Hounds as they rallied from an early deficit and ended up winning in a landslide, downing the Lady Dragons 60-38 to take home third place honors.
“We left a lot on the floor last night and I thought we came out a little sluggish today,” said Manchester head coach Shawn Palmer in his postgame radio interview. “I thought our big third quarter was the difference in the game and I give a lot of respect to our girls for being mentally tough to come back today.”
It was the West Union five who controlled the play as this game began, taking an quick 8-2 advantage after back-to-back three pointers by Kiersten Rowe. A “basket and one” by Jaycee Baldwin made it 11-4 Lady Dragons, before five straight by Manchester, including an Emily Sweeney trey, that cut the margin to 11-9. To close out the first quarter, West Union’s Mackenzie Bickett hit a long three from the corner to give her team a five-point lead after the first eight minutes of action.
The Lady Dragons continued to dial it up from long distance, opening the second quarter with another Kiersten Rowe triple to stretch their lead out to 17-9, before the Lady Hounds bounced off the mat with an 8-0 run, capped by a Sweeney trey that tied the game with two minutes left in the half. With the game later tied at 19 and 38 seconds left in the first half, the Lady Hounds what was the momentum-shifting shot of the game when Hannah Hobbs fired in a three-pointer from the win to give her team a three-point lead going into halftime.
That momentum carried over to the third quarter in a huge way as the Lady Hounds took total control of the game by scoring the first 15 points of the second half. That run began with Sweeney’s third trey of the game and included a three-point play by McKenzie Morrison, a put back bucket by Brooke Kennedy, and concluded with a Morrison three and a 37-19 Manchester lead. The Lady Dragons finally got on the board with a Rowe jumper at the 4:21 mark, but the Lady Hounds responded by scoring the next 10 points, sparked by the play of Yasmin Lucas off the bench and a jumper by Abby McFarland gave Manchester a commanding 46-21 advantage.
West Union got the final two scores of the third quarter, from Baldwin and McKenzie Kirker, but still found themselves staring at a 47-25 deficit as the final quarter began.
The first half of the final period provided some fireworks from both sides, with Kennedy opening the stanza by nailing consecutive three-pointers from opposite corners, followed by an 8-0 West Union spurt that was book ended by three-point goals from Harley Silvia and then Kiersten Rowe that made it 53-33 in favor of the Lady Hounds with four minutes to go and that lead to a final count on the scoreboard of 60-38 Manchester as the Lady Hounds took the third slot in the Holiday Classic.
In the win, the Lady Hounds (4-7) put a pair of girls in double figures, led by Brooke Kennedy’s 15 points, with Emily Sweeney adding 11. Hannah Hobbs and McKenzie Morrison each tallied 9 with Yasmin Lucas chipping in with 8. Kennedy was the Manchester representative on the Classic’s All-Tournament.
West Union (2-7) was paced by 17 points from Kiersten Rowe and 9 from Jaycee Baldwin, with Rowe being named to the All-Tournament Team.

West Union
14 5 6 13 —38
Manchester
9 13 25 13 —60

W. Union (38): Silvia 2 0-1 5, Baldwin 4 1-7 9, Bickett 2 0-2 5, Kirker 1 0-1 2, K. Rowe 6 0-1 17, Team 15 1-12 38.
Manchester (60): White 1 1-4 3, M. Morrison 2 4-6 9, Smith 0 1-2 1, Kennedy 4 5-7 15, Sweeney 4 0-0 11, Lucas 2 4-4 8, Hobbs 4 0-0 9, McFarland 1 0-0 2, paul 1 0-0 2, Team 19 15-23 60.
Three-Point Goals:
W. Union (7)- Silvia 1, Bickett 1, K. Rowe 5
Manchester (7)- Morrison 1, Kennedy 2, Sweeney 3, Hobbs 1

Manchester’s Brooke Kennedy, left. drills the second of back-to-back fourth quarter three-point goals that helped propel the Lady Hounds to a 60-38 win over West Union in the girls consolation game of the 2018 Holiday Classic. (Photo by Mark Carpenter)