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I knew it - East Jessamine always were Colts at heart!...read more...

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The gap between the girls’ basketball programs in Jessamine County may have shrunk a bit during the 2009-2010 season, but an upset was not to be Monday night at East Jessamine in the first round of the 46th district tournament.

The Jaguars (12-14) used an early torrid pace and lights-out shooting to cruise passed the Colts (5-22), 64-37.

East’s Brittany Quinn started the game like a house on fire. She made the game’s opening bucket off the tip. After another bucket, she stole an inbounds pass and nearly had an assist, but a wide-open bucket rimmed out. Quinn sank a 3-pointer minutes later and with five minutes gone in the game, the smoke cleared and East held a 10-0 advantage, seven coming from Quinn.

“I told my assistant last week, ‘You realize who’s going to make the difference in this game, in my mind it would be Brittany and Rachel (Harrington),’” East Coach Jacqueline Coleman said. “And they did.”

“I just came out ready to go,” Quinn said. “We’ve let them stay too close the last two games and we just couldn’t do it. We had to send a message early and that’s what we tried to do.”

While the East defense stifled the West offense through most of the first quarter, it was the Colts who ultimately spelled their own doom with poor shooting.

“We couldn’t hit any shots,” West Coach Troy Thomas said. “We ran the offense. We got looks and we got shots. They just didn’t go in. So, when the shots didn’t go in we became frustrated.”

Thomas said that frustration lead to a lack of focus which spread to the defensive end of the court.

At the end of the first quarter, the Jags led 13-0. West didn’t score until two minutes into the second quarter when Allison Rehner sank a free throw. The Colts scored nine points before halftime, but East added 22 and led 35-9.

It wasn’t as if chaos reigned for the Colts. In fact, a lot of things went according to plan.

“Our goal was to hold (Liz) Miller under 10 points,” Thomas said. “We held her to seven.”

Thomas and the Colts also wanted to limit the effectiveness of Alexus Calhoun. The eighth grader had gone for 18 in the teams’ previous meeting. She spent much of Monday night on the bench with foul trouble. But Quinn and Emily Underwood played the role of spoilers by combining for 30 points and keying an strong offensive attack.

Coleman knew the Colts would put pressure on her main scorers and told her team that others would be needed to avoid an upset.

“We talked a lot about getting our other players into position to affect the game, too,” she said. “Early on, we got hot. Our other players stepped up and helped us build the lead we had in the beginning.”

“We stepped up big,” Miller said. “We had other players step up tonight. It was huge for us. That’s why we won. Coach had a great game plan and it worked.”

Despite being held to just seven points, Miller reached a personal milestone in the game. She connected on a 3-point basket in the second half that pushed her over the 1,000-point mark for her career.

“That was probably the biggest surprise ever,” she said. “It felt good. I never thought I’d reach it, but I had a good season this year. Just goes to show you can do anything if you put your mind to it.”

Underwood led all scorers with 16 points. Quinn added 14 while Calhoun pitched in 10. The Jaguars were 11-of-16 from the charity stripe.

For the Colts, things started out poorly and seemed to get worse. Thomas said that while the shots didn’t fall for his team — the Colts missed 15 shots in the paint in the first half, 11 in the third quarter — he liked his club’s intensity.

“Our energy was there, but the shots didn’t fall,” Thomas said. “We played our worst offensive game. We didn’t hit any shots. That hasn’t happened to us all year long. Our girls were ready. We were pumped. We had a great practice yesterday. We had a walkthrough today and they were ready to go.”

The Colts’ senior tandem of Rehner and Charlsea led the way again for West. Smith paced the team with 14 points and Rehner added nine. The Colts were 14-of-23 on their free throws.

The Jaguars advance to the 46th district title game for the fourth straight year. The key to advancing for East, though, was less about West’s struggles from the floor and their own offensive balance, and more about their mindset.

“This game was all about being mentally tough,” Coleman said. “We press. We get into people’s faces. We run and jump. That’s our game and that’s fine. But we had to setup our mental game up even more and I think that was the difference. Our mental toughness was more important than our physical toughness.”

Miller agreed that the difference was in the team’s mind.

“We knew they had played us tight the last two games, we knew we were going to have to come out hard and play mentally tough,” she said. “Right before the game, Coach told us, ‘Don’t play the jersey; play basketball.’ I think that’s what we did. We didn’t worry about who we were playing. We just played hard.”

West season ends

First-year coach Thomas was upbeat after the game and looked forward to what his club could do in the future, mainly because of their efforts this season.

“Our kids have turned a 360,” he said. “Attitude, work ethic, their enthusiasm, their effort — totally a 360. I couldn’t be prouder. We did a lot of great things this year.”

The Colts defeated Burgin for the first time and earned their first No. 3 seed in the 46th district tournament. And Thomas said the difference has been noticed.

“A lot of coaches around the region and even officials said this was the most improved West Jessamine team they had ever seen.”

There won’t be any break for Thomas, who admitted to staying up nights as late as 3 or 4 a.m. watching tape and taking notes.

“I’m ready to get started (on next season) tomorrow,” he said. “I”m ready to go.”

East season continues

The Jaguars will be the team with its eyes on an upset tonight when they take on Mercer County (19-9).

The Titans won both regular season meetings between the two teams. The last meeting was a 68-37 rout. But when the two clubs met at East Jan. 4, the Titans barely escaped with a 55-51 victory.

Mercer owns a five-game winning streak against the Jaguars. East’s last win came in the district title game two years ago, when the Jaguars upset Mercer 67-64. That title came on West Jessamine’s home floor.

“We want to take it,” Quinn said of the district title. “We want to cut our own nets down.”

Tipoff is set for 7 p.m.

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