The Owensboro Lady Devils grabbed their third-straight win Monday as they led wire-to-wire against the Lady Raiders of Trinity.
Owensboro used tight defense and buckets in the paint to tame the Raiders with the Lady Devils grabbing the 49-32 victory for their seventh win of the year.
With the 9th District Tournament starting in four weeks, OHS coach Jansen Locher said it’s important to get clicking.
“We’re trying to play our best basketball here at the end of the year,” he said. “That’s three wins in a row for us so we really just want to keep building off of that. We think we have a great opportunity to be playing really well when it comes time for districts. That’s all anybody can ask for …
“We did a few things right tonight. We did a few things wrong. We’ll work on getting that under control but proud of our girls. The effort was awesome tonight.”
Both teams struggled out of the gate with the Lady Devils leading 7-3 after the first as the only Trinity field goal game in the final seconds on a Cassidy Morris layup.
Morris finished with a game-high 17 points but Locher said their defense was a bright spot in the game.
“I know how good (Cassidy) Morris is,” he said. “She’s been a scorer since she was in seventh-grade, putting up a lot of points. We wanted to make it as hard as we could tonight for her and I think we did a pretty good job. She made some buckets, some really tough buckets.”
The Lady Devil offense woke up in the second as they held a 23-14 lead at the break and didn’t look back in the second half.
Lizy Phillips led the Lady Devils with 11 points while Brooklyn Williams added 10.
Freshman Alyrica Hughes only finished with 5 points in the game, about half of her average on the year but where Hughes shined was on the defensive end.
Despite picking up two fouls in the first few minutes, Locher left Hughes on the floor to guard Trinity’s Josie Aull. He said he knew Hughes could handle herself and not get into foul trouble.
“She knows how to play,” he said. “She could go a whole game without fouling if I’d let her but that takes the best asset she has in being aggressive. We knew we had to have her in there for offensive purposes, just run the offense and get things going.
“We had a little talk with her … I thought she did a great job. She guarded (Josie) Aull mostly all night long and Aull can light it up and I think Alyrica made it tough on her as Ayrica does on most people. She’s tough on everybody defensively. She may be a freshman on paper but she’s a veteran. She’s somebody we know we can go to and is going to play the game the right way. Even if she gets in trouble a little bit she can calm down and play defense the way she needs to.”
Owensboro plays Friday at home against Butler County while Trinity plays Friday at home against Todd County Central.
OWENSBORO 49, TRINITY 32
OHS (7-8) 7 17 12 13–49
THS (2-10) 3 10 9 10–32
OHS: Alyrica Hughes 5, Brooklyn Williams 10, Lyric Lawrence 8, Lizy Phillips 11, Lindsey Gibson 5, Kayln Sowders 4, Krystell Pappas 6
THS: Cassidy Morris 17, Josie Aull 5, Hadley Hatfield 1, Katherine Hibbitt 7, Emily McDaniel 2
2021 basketball coverage is presented in part by Rhoads & Rhoads Attorneys at Law.
