The North Greene girls started fast on Friday night and never looked back as they took down Chuckey-Doak for the second time this week.
After beating the Lady Black Knights 59-31 on Monday in the Andrew Johnson Bank Ladies Classic the Lady Huskies came back on Friday to earn a 61-53 win in front of their home crowd.
“I thought we got to a really good start, we forced some turnovers to build a lead,” North Greene coach James Buchanan said. “But after the game we talked about how there was inconsistency. We know the potential is there, but that can be a dangerous word. If we are going to fulfill that potential we need set our standard a little higher in terms of consistency. It would be nice have that first quarter and third quarter through the whole game.”
The Lady Huskies used overwhelming full-court pressure to jump out to a 10-0 lead on Friday. That began with Tralyn Southerland going inside to score five points as part of her 21-point night.
After five scoreless minutes where getting shots up was a challenge Chloe Kirkpatrick finally got Chuckey-Doak on the board.
In the final minute of the first quarter Ella Head turned a turnover into a fastbreak layup and Eva Leonard pulled up for a transition triple that gave North Greene a 17-4 lead going into the second quarter.
“The effort was there from the start. They made it hard for (Chuckey-Doak) to even get it inbounds. They were reading passes and getting steals. Then defense started to turn into offense, and that let us get some good looks in transition,” Buchanan said.
Chuckey-Doak began to figure out things on offense in the second quarter and kept pace with the Lady Huskies, but they could not get enough stops to close the gap.
Carlene Bishop got things going with a driving layup and followed it with a three-pointer that cut North Greene’s lead to 21-10.
North Greene’s Cadie McDevitt sank a triple from the corner, and then she set up Southerland on the block to give the Lady Huskies a 29-10 lead.
Chuckey-Doak scored the final nine points of the first half with Cristen Bishop sinking a three-pointer and then adding a pair of free throws.
North Greene went to halftime leading 29-19.
Things picked up for North Greene again coming out of the break and they began to extend the lead.
The advantage reached 40-25 at the midway point after Natalie Foshie went 6-for-6 at the free-throw line in a 22-second stretch.
Leonard followed with a three-pointer and McDevitt finished the frame with a putback that gave the Lady Huskies a 47-29 lead.
North Greene’s Head started the fourth quarter by taking a steal the other way and finishing through contact for what turned into three points the hard way. Leonard then lofted in a floater for another old-fashioned-three-point play and 55-32 lead.
With 4:56 left to play North Greene took its biggest lead at 60-34 when Leonard landed a triple from the corner.
Buchanan pulled his starters midway through the final period and Chuckey-Doak went on a 19-0 run.
Kirkpatrick started the run with a three-pointer and Carlene Bishop followed with two more deep shots. Chuckey-Doak also made eight free-throws during the run.
“We were up 26 with about four minutes left and I felt like those younger kids needed to play. They threw some things at us we had not seen in JV games. We’ve only seen that in practice, and that is safe because we can stop and talk about. But those are things we can learn from and grow from,” Buchanan said.
In addition to 21 points from Southerland North Greene got 12 points from Leonard and 10 from Head.
For Chuckey-Doak Kirkpatrick scored 14 points, Carlene Bishop had 13 and Jayden Myers scored 11.
