The Lynchburg-Clay Lady Mustangs took the trip to Fairfield on Thursday night to take on their Southern Hills Athletic Conference opponent the Fairfield Lady Lions and won with a comfortable margin of 65-30.
The Lady Mustangs’ defense was on point to start the game as they held the Lady Lions to just two made free throws the whole quarter to jump out to an 18-2 lead.
In the second quarter, the Lady Mustangs got a little sloppy with their passes and Fairfield took advantage of it, scoring 16 points in the quarter. Fortunately, the Lynchburg girls were able to keep their offense going and add to their lead even after the surge of points, scoring 19 of their own to take a 37-18 lead into halftime.
In the final two quarters, the Lady Mustangs settled into a groove both offensively and defensively and bring home the win with a final score of 65-30.
“Tonight was a good win for us,” said Lady Mustangs head coach Whitney Lewis after the win. “Defensively, I thought we did a really good job in the first quarter, only allowing two points. You can’t ask for much more than that. In the second quarter, we kind of let down a little bit and [Fairfield] was on fire. They couldn’t miss from inside the arc. Second half, we really wanted to play good defense and [Fairfield] only scored 12 that whole second half compared to the 16 they got on us in the second quarter, so I was really happy with our defensive effort there in that second half.
“Grace [Shope] is a great player. She’s athletic and can shoot the ball really well. She averaging something like 20 points a game. We knew that coming in, if we contained her, we had a pretty good shot of controlling the basketball game and I thought we did a really good job of that.
“[Fairfield] changed up their defense a little bit and kind of confused us a little bit at times. We didn’t take care of the basketball, especially in the first half. We had a couple of silly turnovers, more on us than them, but once we settled down a little bit, we had a pretty good offensive night.”
Box:
LCHS – 18 19 15 13 – 65
FHS – 2 16 3 9 – 30
Lynchburg-Clay: H. Binkley 4(3) 1/2 – 18; M. Binkley 5(1) 1/2 – 14; Scott 6 1/3 – 13; Little 6 – 12; Waits 2 0/3 – 4; Mitchell 1 – 2; Thiel 1 – 2. Totals” 25(4) 3/10 – 65.
Fairfield: Shope 2 3/7 – 7; Huff 2(1) – 7; C. Arnold 3 – 6; Adams 1 2/2 – 4; L. Arnold 2 – 4; Pauley 1 0/2 – 2; Newkirk 0/2 – 0. Totals: 11(1) 5/13 – 30
The Lynchburg-Clay JV team won their game as well with a basket in the final seconds to win 26-24.
Reach Robert Stegbauer at 937-393-3456 ext. 1679 or on Twitter @RStegbauer.
