CROTHERSVILLE
The Crothersville girls basketball team used its stingy defense to ignite an offensive onslaught in a 73-22 victory against Jackson County rivals Medora on Monday.
Medora gave up 29 turnovers and couldn’t recover from the errors as the Tigers capitalized.
The Tigers opened the game on an 11-4 run behind eight points by junior Katrina Christian.
Following a basket by Hornets freshman Kailen Flynn, Crothersville went on a 8-0 run — behind four more points by Christian — for a 17-4 advantage after eight minutes of play.
“She’s always focused and ready to go no matter who it is,” Tigers coach Kevin Hensley said. “We can always count on her for being ready to go hard: at 90 miles per hour.”
Medora struggled on offense in the second quarter, recording just a single point.
At halftime, the Tigers maintained a 32-5 lead.
Flynn tallied all of the Hornets’ points in the opening half.
Marsadeez Phillips scored Medora’s first basket in the third quarter, with 5:21 on the clock, as the Hornets trailed 38-7.
Crothersville outscored the Hornets 24-10 in the quarter.
The third quarter ended on an and-one conversion by the Tigers’ Piper Hensley, as the team led 56-12.
Medora went back to the basics in the remaining minutes to score 10 points.
“We were just trying to set some back screens on the ball,” Medora coach Brad McCammon said. “We had someone step in the gap and hit the shot. We ran some sets in the first half that we couldn’t handle and tried to make it back to basic. They were able to do that and hit a couple.”
Off the bench, Kalynda Hoevener scored the Tigers’ final eight points to end the game.
Christian led the Tigers with 14 points, and Hoevener added 13 with eight rebounds.
“We were just trying to get more efficient on offense,” Hensley said. “We pretty much ran one of our plays over and over, trying to get more efficient. On defense, I didn’t want to press but be hard and aggressive. A lot of times when we get lackadaisical it rolls into the next game.”
A total of 11 Crothersville players scored on the night.
“They were deep and have a lot of talent,” McCammon said. “We’re just learning. We didn’t have any senior leadership with Carley (McCammon) and Jadelyn (Dean) out hurt. With our youth out there, we don’t have any juniors, we basically have a junior varsity team playing an experienced varsity team — in a sense.”
Allison Davidson also pulled down seven rebounds of the Tigers’ 42 total boards.
Flynn and Elexus Morris each tallied seven rebounds of the team’s 23.
Flynn topped the Hornets’ scoring with 10 points, and Lillian Hatfield scored seven.
“We are just trying to play together and bring more intensity. We’re so timid sometimes they don’t look to shoot,” Brad McCammon said. “I think, at times, we were intimidated by (the Tigers’) skill and speed. At times, we kind of stood and watched. We did a little better in the second half. It’s tough when you only have seven healthy kids and they run 15 at you. The kids fought and played hard. You just run into teams with more kids and higher skill level — and that’s what we ran into.
Crothersville (10-8) will play at Austin tonight, while Medora (2-17) will travel to Shoals on Thursday.