Kennett girls pick up tenth-straight win after victory over Twin Rivers

KENNETT – The Kennett Lady Indians basketball program (13-5) experienced the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat at home Thursday night after facing off against two different teams in one night.

Kennett's junior varsity team took a shellacking from Jackson, falling 54-25, while the varsity squad stood strong against the Twin Rivers Lady Royals (8-9) to win 36-28, picking up the varsity team’s tenth-straight win along the way.

Jackson head coach Luke Guyot said his team's game plan was to run a zone offense against Kennett's zone defense and praised the Kennett JV team’s ability to score from the outside.

Kennett head coach Aaron New was supportive of his JV squad and encouraged his girls to rely on fundamentals. The young team’s rebounding skills weren’t quite enough, though, and Jackson was able to capitalize in that regard.

Jackson scored the first goal and ran away with the game 12-4 after the first period, 28-12 at halftime and brought the outing home 54-25 at the final buzzer.

Kennett's struggle with illness and injury as of late showed in its depth as the team drew two varsity players to round out the junior varsity squad.

On the other hand, the varsity game against Twin Rivers was touch and go throughout with the lead changing hands by a free throw a number of times.

Twin Rivers scored first in the opening seconds of the contest and led the Lady Indians at the end of the first period 17-15 with three fouls committed by the Lady Royals to Kennett's two fouls.

Kennett found themselves down by just one point, 18-17, with just under six minutes left in the third period, and New's squad took the lead 21-20 with 4:47 left on the clock. The Lady Indians scrapped with Twin Rivers and entered the final period of play ahead by one point, 26-25.

"We were able to increase the tempo and that helped turn the game our way," New said. "The first period we missed a lot of boards and that allowed them to hang on. They slowed down the game but we were able to overcome that late in the third and up the tempo to our advantage in the fourth."

Kennett held the Lady Royals to just three points in the fourth period and out-gunned Twin Rivers to end the game 36-28.

Kennett senior Lani Heeb was high scorer for the Indians with 13 points to her credit while Twin Rivers senior Charly Johnson led her team with eight points scored.

Both New and Twin Rivers head coach David Crockett heaped mountains of praise on their respective crews.

"This was a great win for us," New said after the game. "Twin Rivers clearly had a great game plan coming in.”

Coach Crockett said his Lady Royals "executed our game plan thoroughly," and he commended the Lady Indians on their win.

"Our girls played extremely hard," Coach Crockett said. "But they beat us on the boards and that hurt us. But our team effort was there. There are no excuses. I felt we had the right plan to keep them perimeter-oriented but they had a few fast breaks that were very successful. I'm proud of our showing. Kennett is tough to beat."

Up next, Kennett hosts Notre Dame (11-1) next Monday beginning at 6:30 p.m. Twin Rivers travels to East Carter (11-5) next Monday as well.