A lot can happen in a matter of 24 hours. Just ask the Jones County Lady Greyhounds.
After stumbling into the new year in with a 58-42 road loss to a Josey team rated second in Class AA, Jones County welcomed Putnam County a night later.
All the Lady Hounds did was roll right over the previously unbeaten War Eagles 53-39, toppling a Putnam County team that’s ranked first in the 1A D-1 classification that also beat JCHS by a point on Dec. 20 in Eatonton.
>> SEE FULL PHOTO GALLERY FROM THE GAME
“We felt like when we went to them, it was our game and they kind of took it from us. So we wanted to kind of make a statement that we’re the better team. We were on a two-game losing streak, and we wanted to prove that we’re still a good team,” Lady Greyhounds head coach Takeo Gray said. “I was not really disappointed with our two losses because the schedule did its job to test us. I’m proud of our girls for how they responded.”
Saturday night in Gray was far different than two weeks prior. What began as a tight game was blown wide open in the second quarter. It began with key offensive execution by the Lady Greyhounds, whose basket and free throw by Liberty Pennamon in the quarter’s first minute extended the initial JCHS lead to 18-10.
“It was the second quarter, that really won the game for us,” Gray said.
Jones County simply built on key buckets on the offensive end, punctuated by a Kamiyah Adams layup off a steal and an Autumn Coleman three pointer, stretching the advantage to 26-10. Aubrey Norris scored half of her team-high 16 points in the second quarter, and that included a pair of three pointers. Adams and Pennamon added 13 and 10 points.
“They were locked in from the start; we got a cushion,” Gray said. “We knew they were going to come out and attack. We talked about playing to our pace and not their pace and get the ball inside.”
And with a Lady Hounds defensive effort that flustered Putnam County, JCHS led 37-12 at halftime after holding Putnam to a mere two second-quarter points.
That effort was triggered in part from a defensive adjustment following the previous meeting between both teams.
“We played mostly man last time, so this time we went to more of a zone,” Gray said. “We wanted to force them to shoot from the outside.”
That cushion helped Jones County coast to the win, a cushion that made things more manageable as Putnam County employed a full-court press that Jones County navigated through, getting the win against a sizeable crowd at the JCHS gymnasium.
“It’s a big win and big statement,” Gray said.
Last weekend’s pair of games helped the Lady Hounds get their footing back after nearly two weeks off over the holidays, but any semblance of a break won’t come until the season ends. From this point on, JCHS has only one non-region game, and this Friday’s contest against Union Grove is just one of two region games at home the rest of the season for Jones County, which entered the new year tied for first in the region at 6-1 and 9-4 overall.
