GREENVILLE – The Greenville Lady Wave battled an expanding injury bug to go along with the flu bug in dropping a 37-25 home MVL matchup with the Xenia Lady Buccaneers.
“It’s just the reality of it,” said Greenville coach, Rachael Kerns. “Next man up goes but we lose by 12 and arguably one of our best all-around players (Megan Lind) who averages 10 points a game was sitting there watching.”
Greenville jumped out to an 8-2 lead at 2:34 in the opening quarter and closed out first-quarter play with an 11-5 lead led by six Maddie Hutchens points in her first career varsity start for the Lady Wave.
“Maddie is one of our most blessed natural scorers we have in our program,” Kerns stated. “We need Maddie to be able to play at the varsity pace every possession. When Maddie plays at the varsity pace Maddie is a great varsity basketball player. We’re not always consistent there but with the current situation we have she’s going to get there pretty quick.”
Xenia was one better in the second quarter by a 7-6 score sending the teams to the break with Greenville holding a 17-12 advantage.
Greenville pushed its lead to 19-12 with Hutchens scoring the opening basket of the second half only to be met with a 23-0 Xenia scoring run extending late into the fourth quarter of action for a 35-19 advantage before a Hutchens four-foot jumper in the lane broke the scoring drought giving the visitors a 35-21 lead with 2:11 on the game clock.
“We gave up too many offensive rebounds, too many second, third, fourth chance points,” said Kerns. “We weren’t ready to play with the personnel we had. We lost somebody earlier today that we didn’t know we weren’t going to have so we didn’t have time to practice – putting people in different situations. Overall they did a good job. We just have to put the ball in the hole, we’re not that far off, we just need someone else to be able to score a little bit.”
The final quarter went to Xenia 13-6 giving the Lady Buccaneers a 12-point conference win.
“It was a physical game,” Coach Kerns noted. “Brooke Schmidt is unbelievable. I don’t know if anyone on our team understands what Brooke does.”
“The one that can catch people off guard is Jayda Lyons,” Kerns continued. “She can jump and go get them too but Jayda always has such a specialized role and her role was to keep No. 11 (Alaiya Meaux) in check today and she did a phenomenal job of that. The last time we played them No. 11 single-handedly killed us. We did not have Jayda that game and tonight No. 11 had one point and that is full credit to Jayda Lyons – she is a phenomenal defender.”
Hutchins led Greenville with 12 points.
BOXSCORE:
XENIA – G. Winegarner 14, S. Collier 9, M. Channels 4, N. Madison 4, J. Bailey 3, J. Dyer 2, A. Meaux 1 TOTALS 11 9-18 2 37
GREENVILLE – M. Hutchens 12, E. Fugett 3, A. Baumann 2, J. Lyons 2, S. Loudy 2, A. Loudy 2, B. Schmidt 2 – TOTALS 12 1-6 0 25
3-POINTERS
Xenia 2 (G. Winegarner 1, S. Collier 1)
Greenville 0
SCORE by QUARTERS
05-07-12-13 37 Xenia
11-06-02-06 25 Greenville
