Allen East’s Kennedy Truex and Delphos Jefferson’s Lyv Lindeman (15) compete for the ball during a Thursday Division III district semifinal at Elida. See more high school basketball photos at LimaScores.com.
Richard Parrish | The Lima News
Two rematches in the Elida Division III girls basketball district semifinals produced the same results as in the regular season games when Delphos Jefferson beat Allen East 49-36 and Ottawa-Glandorf was a 64-49 winner over Sherwood Fairview on Thursday night.
Jefferson (23-1) will play O-G (21-3) at 2 p.m. Saturday for the Elida district championship.
During the regular season Jefferson had to go to overtime to get a 50-47 win over the Mustangs on Dec. 3, but it had the lead for the whole game in the postseason matchup.
The Wildcats led 21-14 after one quarter, 27-21 at halftime and 44-30 after three quarters.
Rylynn Marquiss’ 11 points, including three 3-pointers, led the scoring for Jefferson. Lauren French had a double-double with 10 points, 15 rebounds and 4 blocked shots. Gwen Teman had 10 points, including a pair of 3-pointers, and Lyv Lindeman just missed a double-double with nine points and 11 rebounds.
“We battled, we played great defense, we rebounded pretty well, we distributed the ball,” Jefferson coach Denise Lindeman said.
The Wildcats were coming off a 9 for 45 shooting performance in a 31-30 sectional championship win over Coldwater last Saturday but had that many field goals in the first quarter on Thursday night when they hit 9 of 13 in the opening eight minutes.
They hit 20 of 42 (47 percent in the game) and were 6 of 17 on 3-pointers. Allen East was 13 of 47 (28 percent).
Rilynn Jones led Allen East (17-7) with 11 points and Savana Brooks had 10 points.
The Mustangs cut Jefferson’s lead to 26-21 with 2:44 left in the first half and were down only 27-21 at halftime.
But Jefferson regained the momentum in the third quarter and didn’t let it get away a second time.
“You cannot shoot yourself out of a game, especially in tournament time,” Lindeman said. “We had a nice lead and then we started shooting outside and not taking great shots.
“We had to bring them back in and run the offense, take the easy shots. You don’t have to shoot threes and I thought the girls did a nice job in the fourth quarter of doing that.”
Ottawa-Glandorf’s win over Fairview also was by a significantly larger margin than its regular season win in which it came from behind in the fourth quarter to win 59-58 on Dec. 3.
“We were behind the 8-ball. We had a late start because of soccer. We’d only had a couple of games. Chloe Glenn obviously was a difference maker tonight and she didn’t play in that game. We’re a different team now,” Ottawa-Glandorf coach Troy Yant said about the Titans’ earlier game against Fairview.
“I was happy with the way the girls just played a team game. The defense was really, really good,” he said. “I told them in the locker room it’s not our best performance but it’s better than where we were and we’ll take it,” he said.
Glenn led Ottawa-Glandorf’s scoring with 19 points. Karsyn Erford scored 12 points and Carlie Brinkman had 10 points.
O-G played without starting point guard Kaelyn Grothause and senior Emma Brinkman, who was one of the Titans’ top seven players. And Maggie Verhoff, a starter, was lost for the season with an ACL injury in December.
Grothause and Brinkman were out because of illness over the last two weeks.
“They haven’t practiced most of that time. If we get them back it’s going to be slow getting them back. It’s not the way you want to jump into the tournament but I thought the other girls responded well. I thought Carlie (Brinkman) and Megan (Horstman) came in and gave us great minutes,” Yant said.
With Grothause out, Erford, a freshman, took over at point guard. “I thought Karsyn did a great job of handling the point,” Yant said.
Carrie Zeedyk, the Player of the Year in the Green Meadows Conference, led Fairview (19-5) with 26 points and Kelly Crites scored 13.
Reach Jim Naveau at 567-242-0414.
