Tuesday was a busy day locally for high school basketball, with three of the four teams in Z-Land in action. Our microphones were at the gym in Decatur, where the highly-anticipated season for the Bellmont Braves began with a thrashing of Concordia Lutheran.
Here’s a rundown of the action on the night:
LOCAL SCORES
Bellmont 71 Concordia Lutheran 44
Much of the talk in the Bellmont game revolved around a highly-touted freshman class, but no ninth grader made coach Andy Heim’s starting lineup. With the score tied at 6-6, the first substitutions were made and Oni Krueckeberg and Ashley Bleke entered the contest.
Krueckeberg immediately made her presence known by creating a turnover and later knocking down a pair of threes in the opening quarter, while Ashley Bleke hit three shots in her first four career minutes. Ashley went on to lead all scorers in the contest with 19 points.
Later in the first half, Heim brought out Mary Bleke and Kaitlyn Barton, with the crowd getting a look at the four ninth-graders on the court along with Emily Bleke, who figures to be one of the very best players in the NE8 this season.
That group led Bellmont on a run that put the home team up 43-21 at halftime.
Hadley Caffee also made her varsity debut, picking up a couple of blocked shots and joining her freshman teammates at one point in the second half when all five players in the BHS lineup were ninth graders.
The Braves are back in action Friday against Woodlan at home.
Bluffton 76 Northfield 42
Columbia City 54 West Noble 7
DeKalb 61 FW North Side 47
East Noble 47 Bishop Dwenger 40
Eastside 62 Blackhawk Christian 42
FW Snider 51 Huntington North 40
FW Wayne 77 Blackford 8
Garrett 65 Heritage 35
Danica Fuller led the Patriots with 17 points on 7 of 16 shooting, but it was not enough to hang with the Railroaders Tuesday night.
Olivia Lybarger knocked down three long-range shots to finish with ten points in the loss.
Audra Bickel led the team with eight rebounds.
Jay County 60 FW South Side 40
Leo 43 Churubusco 39
Lewis Cass 33 Manchester 30
Norwell 62 FW Northrop 57
Southern Wells 54 Union (Modoc) 31
Winchester 70 South Adams 27
South Adams faced a tough trip south on US 27 to face Winchester and feel behind early, trailing at halftime 41-14.
Anna Lehman led the Stars in scoring with nine points, while Laney Trausch had five.
“This was a really tough matchup for us tonight,” noted head coach Brett Freeman to WZBD after the game. “They have a lot of size and some good experience. There just wasn’t a lot of answers for multiple girls over 6 feet. Their pressure got to us at times thru the night as well. I was extremely happy with our effort tonight. The girls played hard from start to finish, despite the score. There was no back down from anyone.”
Winchester was led in scoring by Alivia McCoy with 22.
“We’ll get back in the gym tomorrow and continue working on getting better,” said Freeman.
The Stars will be at Blackford, who scored just eight points at Wayne Tuesday, on Saturday.
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