Boyle County was the first to shake off a slow start to take down Garrard County in the two teams’ first game of 45th District girls basketball.

The Rebels won 61-37 behind a balanced scoresheet and a tough zone defense.

“I thought in the first half, we were a little sluggish,” Boyle head coach Greg Edwards said. “I think we were like 2-for-17 in the first part of the game. Obviously when we started making shots, we got things to flow a bit better.”

The Rebels trailed Garrard County 10-8 after one quarter of play but started to heat up in the second quarter, scoring 26 points, to take a 34-21 lead into halftime.

Edwards said a switch to zone defense helped his team secure defensive rebounds and energized the offense.

“That’s what we have to do. I don’t think right now we’re good enough at any one thing,” Edwards said. “But our half-court 1-3-1 has been pretty decent, we haven’t worked on it a whole lot but it’s been good to us. I thought tonight, we kind of limited Garrard when we went to that. They didn’t get as many shots off. We’ve got some length and we’re able to use that to our advantage.

“Man-to-man at the first of the game, we weren’t that bad, but I thought they got too many second shots. You’d think being in man-to-man, chances of getting rebounds would be better. But for us, it was the other way around tonight. Sometimes that happens.”

Garrard head coach Scott Latham said he saw his team perform the way they performed in practice leading up to the game.

“I told them that the small things are important,” he said. “The way you practice in the days before a game matter. We had two terrible practices before this game. The first 20 minutes of practice was good every day and then the rest was terrible, and that’s the way we played tonight. We played good in the first quarter and then laid an egg the rest of the game.”

Madisyn Neeley led the Golden Lions with 17 points. She kept her team in the game with nine points in the second quarter.

But the Rebels heated up as well. Danielle Roney scored nine points in the second frame while McKayla Baker and Rachael Leath each hit two threes as well to pull the Rebels ahead.

At the break, Edwards said he wanted his team to be even more dominant on the glass.

“McKayla shot the ball well in the second half, and some girls defensively I thought stepped up,” Edwards said. “One of the things we emphasized at halftime was getting on the offensive glass, in the second half we did a much better job of that. Rachael Leath did a great job of that, Gracie (Edmiston) crashed the boards, Dani always does that. We’ve been getting rebounding out of a lot of different people and that’s what I’m going to emphasize more because for us where we need to be, rebounding is something we’ll need to be better.”

Boyle continued to stifle the Garrard offense in the third and fourth quarters, limiting the Golden Lions to just 16 points in the final 16 minutes.

Edwards said that’s down to a team effort.

“We’re getting good minutes off of our bench, every night it seems like there’s somebody different that comes in and gets things done,” he said. “That’s the sign of a team that is capable of doing good things, when you get different people off of the bench and it’s not always the same ones. I think we’ve got a lot of work to do but I like where we are.”

Latham, on the other hand, said he’s focused on the mental side of things before and during games moving forward.

“We talked about the bus ride over here, laughing and giggling, talking on the back of the bus instead of focusing on the game,” he said. “I took care of that, that’s on me but that’ll be fixed from now on. We’re going to be focused, ready to play basketball as soon as we step on the bus.”

The Rebels start 45th District play with a win, and the road toughens up next week with a trio of 12th Region games.

“I’ve been real pleased with our team so far,” Edwards said. “We’ve got 12 wins and I don’t know that many people would have thought we’d have done that at this point. The girls have done a real good job of being more team oriented, as far as everyone getting their touches.

“It’s a good win for us and puts us at 1-0 in the district. We’ve got a brutal week ahead of us, we’ve got to make up that game with Casey on Monday, obviously Danville on Tuesday and Lincoln on Friday.”

 

Score by quarter

 

BC 8 26 17 10 — 61

GC 10 11 7 9 — 37