Indians edge Rangers to remain unbeaten

FORT RECOVERY - Was Fort Recovery coach Brian Patch pleased with the all-around offensive effort of his team during Thursday's game with New Knoxville?

Not particularly.

One thing Patch was happy about, however was that his team stayed unbeaten with a 38-33 victory against the Rangers to open Midwest Athletic Conference girls basketball competition.

The Indians went on a 12-5 run in the third quarter and held on to win after a late comeback attempt by New Knoxville to improve to 3-0 on the season.

"Anytime you win in this conference you're always happy, especially at home. You can't give away home games in this conference," Patch said.

Whitney Will scored 10 points and Carley Stone had all eight of her points in the fourth quarter for the Indians, who shot 5-of-22 in the first half but made 8-of-17 in the second half to create enough distance in the end.

"They took us mentally out of things and because of that, we were rushing stuff," Patch said. "We told our girls we wanted to get up early, but we're not getting up early by shooting bad shots. We didn't want to get up a quantity of shots.We wanted to make sure we got up quality shots.

"Even though it's early, our first two games have been high-quality shots. We shot 50 percent in both games from the floor, and we come in this one and we're shooting like 23 percent in the first half because we shot bad shots. In the second half, we came out and I think we shot 57 percent - and that's how we normally play."

Kenzie Schroer had a game-high 16 points and Ashlyn Miller added 11 for New Knoxville, which rallied from a double-digit fourth-quarter deficit to make it a one-score game in the final minute.

"I'm very proud of the way we stuck it out," New Knoxville coach Tim Hegemier said. "We were down double digits going into the fourth quarter and we came back."

The teams went scoreless through the first four-minutes-and-change. Jocelyn Kaiser's three-pointer at the 3:40 mark of the opening quarter gave Fort Recovery a 3-0 lead. Ashlyn Miller's triple supplied the Rangers their first points with 45 seconds left to level the score. Will's jumper with five seconds to go gave the Indians a 5-3 lead during a quarter in which the teams shot a combined 3-of-20 from the floor.

Schroer scored seven points in the second quarter, but Kiah Wendel and Will broke a 12-all tie with back-to-back buckets to send the Indians into the locker room with a 16-12 advantage.

Will scored four points in a minute stretch to open the third and increase Fort's lead to 20-12. The Rangers fired back with a 5-0 run. Wendel and Grace Thien nailed three-pointers on consecutive possessions and Val Muhlenkamp added a layup to lead an 8-0 Fort Recovery run to close the quarter.

At the beginning of the fourth, Miller cut the Knoxville deficit back to single digits with her second triple of the night. Then Stone went on her rampage - hitting two three-pointers and a jumper during a short stretch to send the Indians back in front by double figures midway through the quarter.

But it was far from over.

Miller knocked down her third three-pointer of the evening with 2:04 left, making the score 36-30. Then Schroer stole an inbounds pass and cashed in on a three-point play. The Indians committed another turnover against the Rangers' full-court pressure with 1:20 remaining. Trying to inch closer, New Knoxville's Megan Jurosic received a pass off a slip screen and went up for a shot but was stuffed by Will.

The Rangers set up a play for the game-tying bucket with under 15 seconds to go, but they didn't execute and ended up committing a turnover. Then Kaiser knocked down two foul shots to clinch the game for the Indians.

"We had a chance to tie it with 10 seconds," Hegemier said. "We set up a play and we didn't quite run it right. Kenzie was open, but she didn't get the ball. We've got a freshman and a couple sophomores that don't have varsity experience. Hopefully they'll start learning a little bit."

"Luckily we were able to hit some shots - Carley Stone's two threes were huge for us," Patch added. "(Kaiser's) hitting those two free throws at the end was a big senior moment for us."

Both teams return to the court for games on Saturday. New Knoxville (1-4) hosts Lehman and Fort Recovery hosts Hoosier State rival Jay County.