NEW MADISON – The Tri-Village Lady Patriots jumped out to a 27-6 first quarter lead against Trotwood Madison and never looked back on their way to a 75-36 win over the Lady Rams.
The Patriots went up 10-0 by the 5:20 mark prompting Trotwood to call a timeout to try and settle the team.
TV would score two more times before the Rams dented the scoring column at 4:13 in the opening quarter.
But the Patriots offensive barrage continued with another 13 unanswered points for a 27-2 lead. The Rams would two more scores in the last minute to trail 27-6 at the end of the first quarter.
In the opening frame it was Adalynn Hines with the hot hand as the junior guard scored 11 points, Kenna Wilcox had 7, Tai Mize 6 and Mylee Bierly a triple.
The intensity dwindled on defense in the 2nd quarter and saw the Rams outscore Tri-Village 17-16 but still trail 43-23 at the half.
“We got off to a good start offensively and been playing pretty well lately,” Tri-Village coach Brad Gray said.
He credited some of that improvement to the play of his junior point guard Tai Mize.
“The last two games Tai Mize has made really good decisions, making the right plays, making the right reads, getting everybody else involved. You want your point guard to make other players on the court better. She’s really been doing that the last two games, and she’s also it’s increased her offensive output as well,” Gray praised.
On cue in the 3rd quarter was Mize knocking down two triples (5 on the night) and eight points in the quarter. Kenna Wilcox had 7 points and Adalynn Hines connected from distances as well for a 20-point quarter to surge further ahead 63-34 heading into the final stanza.
It was a free skate with everyone getting on the floor in the final frame and the Patriots skated through winning the quarter 12-9.
The bench was extra excited to see freshman Kash Mead knock down a perimeter three and senior Allie Nuse converted a fielder in the lane as the Patriots went on to win the game 75-43.
Although, coach Gray was pleased with the offense and their first quarter performance on defense … he wasn’t happy beyond that.
“We didn’t carry that same intensity on defense for the remaining 24 minutes after that first quarter start. The disappointing part is our individual defense sometimes looks pretty good, and we have a couple lockdown defenders out there, but our team defense isn’t in the right spots, at the right time, it’s just not good and that’s on us. We got to get better. We got to coach it better, because apparently we’re not coaching it well enough right now,” Gray explained.
But he has been pleased with the way kids have come along on offense and recognizes the extra time and effort they are putting into it and sees the results.
“We’re a streaky team, we’ve got multiple kids that can hit the three, but like I said, it’s streaky, and it seems like it’s a different kid each night. The encouraging thing is, I think the last two games the three we really expect to kind carry us in scoring have done that,” Gray said.
The other encouraging thing is Mylee Bierly is starting to shoot the ball better. You know, she’s putting extra time in, in the gym, spending some time after practices, coming in some on the weekends, to try to get extra shots up and starting to see the benefits of that and I think she ended up with a couple threes tonight,” Gray stated.
“KB is doing the same thing, KB (Kaley Brandon) came in and hit some shots for us. Good shots in good spot,” he added.
So, we do have multiple kids that can do it, it’s just trying to find a night where all of them are hitting at the same time, Gray commented.
Tai Mize led the way for TV with 22 points, Kenna Wilcox and Adalynn Hines both had 16, Mylee Bierly 8, McKenzie Besecker 4, Kash Mead 3, Alexa Lights and Allie Nuse both had 2 points in the win.
Tri-Village improves to 4-2 overall and will play Tri-County North Thursday night at home in a matchup of two teams that are 1-1 in the WOAC.
