Story and Photos by Rusty Ellis
The Jackson County Lady Devils struggled offensively from the opening tip in Monday’s 51-24 defeat at the hands of Watertown.
Trailing 15-6 heading into the second quarter, the Lady Tigers outscored Jackson County 16-8 in the frame to take a 31-14 lead into the halftime break.
Jackson County’s worst offensive quarter proved to be the third, as they only managed four points and found themselves down 42-18 heading into the fourth. This allowed Watertown to cruise to the finish, as they left Gainesboro with a 51-24 victory.
Madison King led all scorers with 18 points for Watertown, while Gwen Franklin added 14 for the Lady Tigers.
Erin Davidson paced Jackson County with nine points, as head coach Jim Brown says his team never got on a consistent offensive track and the game snowballed from there.
“We made some mistakes early and we let that dictate the entire game,” Brown said. “I thought we really played two good games against Van Buren and Red Boiling Springs, but we’re still learning. It was a physical game, and we didn’t really respond.”
Turnovers plagued the Lady Devils the entire night, and one can make a pretty simple bet on how much of an emphasis Brown will put on that moving forward.
“It’s a big focus, and it is every practice and every game,” Brown said. “We’ve got some young people that are in some spots that they’ve probably got a little too much put on them at this point in their career, but they’re going to have to grow up in a hurry and learn how to handle the ball.”
The Blue Devils followed up with a dominant performance of their own, knocking off Watertown 73-49.
Both teams struggled defensively at the start of the game, but a switch to halfcourt-pressure led to some fast breaks for Jackson County and they used them to build a 22-14 lead heading into the second quarter.
The Blue Devil defense continued its stingy ways in the second quarter, as they held Watertown to a mere seven points en route to taking a 44-21 lead into half. The third quarter was pretty evenly split, with Jackson County outscoring the visitors 16-13, and the home team closed out the win in the fourth quarter to move their record to 6-2 on the season.
Tre Monette scored a game-high 26 to lead the Blue Devils, while Ramon Cuevas scored 18 points. Jordan Arroyo scored 13 points of his own.
With both teams struggling for stops early on, JCHS head coach Kevin Thomas’ switch to the pressure proved to be the deciding factor in this game.
“We were playing some man-to-man and they were playing really methodically,” Thomas said. “We went to a half-court trap and back to a 1-3-1 zone, and we felt like that made a big difference for us, trying to use our length.”
There were many people that may have looked at this district before the season and pegged it as a one-horse race. If anything has been said by the 6-2 start to the season by the Blue Devils, it’s that they’re going to battle and they’ll be right in the thick of things come postseason time.
“I’ve seen York and Monterey both on film,” Thomas said. “I know York’s got a really good team, so we’re try to get better and better every day.”
Jackson County’s next outing will be on Friday, when they head to Hartsville to take on Trousdale County. The girls game will tip at 6 P.M. with the boys to follow.
