Hinton – In a game where offense was a struggle, a 14-point lead in the fourth quarter was seemingly more than enough for Summers County to cruise home with.
Shady Spring made the Bobcats sweat it out.
The host Bobcats withstood a late run from the Tigers, winning their opening matchup of the 36th annual Rogers Oil Classic 43-37 Friday night in Hinton.
The win sends Summers to the Rogers Oil title game where it will face Pocahontas County on Saturday at 7:30. Shady will face Summit Christian in the consolation game.
Ahead 41-27 early in the fourth following a Carly Perisnger 3, Summers seemingly had the game in hand with Shady ultimately hitting on just 26 percent of its shots on the night but a 10-0 run made it a four-point game with two minutes to play.
“Our kryptonite has been our second quarter,” shady head coach Kylie Meadows said. “Honestly when I see down 14, that’s not that deep because we’ve been in that situation. That’s kind of our bad habit we’re forming. We’ve played a lot better through the quarters and made progress to not get down as much. To us I just walked in like it was 0-0. Let’s settle in after the half, get some stops and we’re good. That doesn’t bother me getting down that much.”
Summers fared little better from the field, firing at juts a 28 percent clip (15-for-54) but managed to hit five 3s, three of them early.
“We haven’t played in two-and-a-half weeks and I thought we actually came out and handled that pretty well,” Summers County head coach Doug Trail said. “The big thing I’m disappointed in is when we got a (14) point lead we started taking bad shots and wouldn’t run the floor to ge back on defense and get the ball stopped. I din’t know if fatigue set in or they thought the game was over with. We are a pretty young team.”
A pair of 3s from Hadley Bennett and another from Jaelyn Boone helped Summers settle into a 10-4 lead
Shady clawed back to within three points on layups by Hallee Harper and Kendal Wickline but Summers pushed its lead to 10 points in the second quarter on the strength of buckets from Carly and Ali Persinger as well as another layup form Jaelyn Boone.
Shady later cut the deficit back to five but the Bobcats repeatedly expanded the advantage, leading 34-24 after three quarters.
Boone’s layup early in the fourth frame followed later by a Carly Persinger 3 pushed the lead to 14 and 41-27.
But the momentum flipped afterwards.
Wickline started the rally with a layup and a free throw before Brooklyn Gibson added another bucket from point blank range. Wickline later capped the run with just over two minutes to play but the Bobcats effectively milked the remainder of the clock while Shady missed its final six shot attempts.
“I think our defensive pressure kind of let them get back in the game,” Trail said. “They’re taking us to the basket and we just kind of jumped off instead of stopping the ball. We wanted to just reach and slap like they don’t hear that every day. We get our hands on the ball a lot and they just take it from us.”
Boone and Bennett led Summers with 13 points each in the win while Wickline led all scorers with 20 points in the loss.
Shady Spring
Josie Farrish 4, Kendal Wickline 20, Skylar Gibson 8, Brooklyn Brogan 3, Hallee Harper 2
Summers County ‘
Jaelynn Boone 13, Hadley BEnnett 13, Carly Persinger 7, Lynzee Farley 7, Elli Meadows 1, Ali Persinger 2
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