Riding momentum from Tuesday’s victory, the Truckers JV girls basketball team jumped out to an early and seemingly commanding 11-3 lead at Wittenberg Thursday night.
“We picked up right where we left off. We were being aggressive and slowly pulling away from the opponent,” said Coach Kevin Reese. “Then we led our guard down, got in foul trouble, made some substitutions, and starting beating ourselves with turnovers.”
The Truckers lost their composure and miscues piled up against the Chargers relentless pull court pressure. By the half the Trucker lead was erased with Clintonville now trailing 24-18.
Defensive breakdowns and offensive struggles were typical of the third quarter, where Wittenberg was able to add to its lead now ahead 40-23 over the Truckers. In the fourth quarter an inspired Trucker squad fired on all cylinders, nearly able to repeat Tuesday’s magic as they closed the margin to 40-43 with under a minute remaining in the game.
In the end it was too late, and the Truckers fell to the Chargers 46-41.
The Truckers were jump started by Hailey Sorenson who scored nine of her 18 points during the fourth quarter comeback attempt. Sorenson led all scorers on the evening, while also having seven rebounds.
“I thought we had lightning in a bottle captured. We had all the momentum and Wittenberg was starting to pile up mistakes that we capitalized on. It was surreal witnessing what felt like another magical come from behind last second victory. The girls were playing so inspired on both ends of the court, everything was going our way. Our adjustments were being executed, it was thrilling, but we ran out of time. We missed a lot of free throws during that stretch that maybe could have won it for us. Hopefully we find a way to be more consistent in future games to avoid these fourth quarter excitements,” commented Reese.
Miranda Hagberg led the team with 10 rebounds and Paige Lehman had a team high two assists. Also scoring for the Truckers were Heidi Krause with eight, Ali Moon with five, Hagberg with four, Allison Shepard and Lehman both with three and Steph Pinno with two.