VERSAILLES – The Tri-Village Lady Patriots defeated the Fairlawn Lady Jets 57-21 and led 54-9 after three complete to advance in OHSAA DIV tournament action.
“Defensively this was another night where our defense created some offense – that’s a plus,” said Tri-Village coach Brad Gray. “When we’re active defensively we can be a problem for people.”
The Lady Patriots got a slow start, finding themselves trailing early before rebounding to take the opening quarter by an 18-7 score.
“Give credit to Fairlawn,” Gray said. “They came out and scored a couple of buckets on us, had a lead on us for a little bit and made our kids realize that this wasn’t going to be a walk in the park without giving great effort. They kind of woke our kids up a little bit.”
“It’s a couple of games I’ve not been happy with how we come out initially but I like our response after we’ve woke up a little bit,” he added.
Tri-Village found its stride in period No. 2 putting 28 points on the board while holding the Lady Jets scoreless in the quarter and taking a 46-7 lead to the halftime break.
“We are a much better team when we can get out and go and we were able to do that some tonight in the middle part of the game,” Gray stated. “I’m pleased with how our main rotation played tonight – we were pretty good with our main group. It was good to see Adalynn and Tai get us going in that second quarter.”
With a running clock in play the entire second half, Coach Gray sprinkled in his bench the third quarter and got his younger bench players quality tournament playing time to close out the game.
“Adalynn is a good midrange jumper and we want her to get to that more,” said Coach Gray. “Her speed and athleticism – if she’s playing in the open court she’s going to be a problem for people. Tai has speed, Sydnee (DeLong) has speed. If we can get our guards out and running, more often than not we’re going to have more speed on the floor than most of the teams we play.”
Adalynn Hines led Tri-Village and all scorers with a game-high 15 points and Tai Mize added 13 points to the Lady Patriots scorebook.
Tri-Village advances to take on the Mississinawa Valley Lady Blackhawks in a third-round DIV matchup, on Wednesday, February 28 at Versailles High School with a 6 p.m. start time. The two WOAC teams finished one and two in the final conference standing, Tri-Village earning Conference Champions with an 11-0 mark and the Lady Hawks second with a 10-1 record, their only league loss, a one-point 60-59 loss coming at the hands of the Lady Patriots on December 7, 2023.
“We can’t put any stock into what happened the first game, that was really early,” said Coach Gray. “We’re a much different team now than what we were then, we didn’t have Adalynn Hines at the time and she brings a punch to our team both with her offensive and defensive capabilities. We’re pretty confident that Bella (Black) is going to be back for this next game. We’re going to be a lot different than what we were the first time we played them. Hopefully, we can be a better version of ourselves than we were the first time we played them but they’re a lot different now too.”
BOXSCORE:
TRI-VILLAGE 57, FAIRLAWN 21
TRI-VILLAGE – A. Hines 15, T. Mize 13, K. Hager 10 Kenna Wilcox 8, S. DeLong 4, Kiersten Wilcox 4, R. Hager 2, M. Besecker 1 – TOTALS 24 6-13 1 57
FAIRLAWN – A. North 9, L. Clemans 6, Heath 6 – TOTALS 4 4-4 3 21
3-POINTERS
Tri-Village 1 (T. Mize 1)
Fairlawn 3 (A. North 3)
SCORE by QUARTERS
18-28-08-03 57 Tri-Village
07-00-02-12 21 Fairlawn
