December 4, 2003 - New Madison

The Lady Patriots came into the game tonight with a 1-1 record and ready to open conference play against Pleasant Hill's Newton Indians. It would be a long night for Newton as they found it tough to score against the Patriots and Tri-Village ran away with a 41-10 victory bringing their record to 2-1 on the season and 1-0 in the conference.

The Patriots started quickly taking the jump ball and scoring a layup never to look back. Tri-Village scored the first 12 points before the Lady Indians made a free throw to break their own scoring drought. Tri-Village started the game by applying full court pressure and forcing turnovers which ended in easy baskets and 16-1 lead at the end of the first quarter.

When a team gets off to a good start as the Lady Patriots did tonight and the opposing team doesn't respond it becomes a concern to a coach. A coach has to find a way to maintain a team's intensity and look for things to work on to improve the team for the future.

In the second quarter Coach Maples tried to do just that by having the Lady Patriots work on a 1-2-2 zone. The defense continued to stifle the Indians, but also saw Tri-Village become a bit complacent failing themselves to execute on offense and ending the quarter in a 2-2 tie with the Lady Indians, but more importantly an 18-3 lead at the half.

In the second half the Patriots continued to play good defense. "I thought we played good defense all night" said coach Maples." "We blocked out well on the defensive side of the ball and got good second shots on the offensive end." The third quarter was the same story as the second with the Patriots playing solid man to man defense and shutting out the Indians in the quarter. But again Tri-Village was finding it difficult to score on offense. In spite of that Tri-Village increased their lead to 26-3 at the end of the third quarter.

In the fourth quarter the flood gates opened as the Patriots were running the fast break and getting easy scores reminiscent to that of the first quarter. Although the Lady Patriots were never really challenged tonight, Coach Maples commented that his team "improved on their free throw shooting." The Lady Patriots were lead tonight by Samantha Coomer with 12 points and Olivia Frazier with 11. They will continue play this Saturday with the reserve team playing at National Trail at 3pm and the Varsity Girls playing at 6pm.

Box Scores
Tri-Village
#24 - Moore - 4
#32 - Deaton - 5
#42 - Skidmore - 7
#44 - Frazier - 11
#50 - Coomer - 12
#22 - Shane - 2
TOTALS 41

Newton
#10 - Clawson - 1
#14 - Van Culin - 5
#40 - Diers - 4