TROY – The Greenville Lady Wave took their game on the road to face the Troy Lady Trojans and came away with a Wednesday night 42-35 MVL win.
“Just so proud of the girls that got to play,” said Greenville coach Rachael Kerns. “It’s always a good day when we beat Troy. Always nice to get a MVL win and getting them at their place is nice too.”
Troy took a 7-6 lead after one period of play with Haleigh Mayo accounting for five of the Lady Wave points with a 3-pointer and a 2-point goal.
Greenville battled back to take the second quarter 14-5 led by 8 Morgan Gilbert points coming by way of a trey, two 2-point goals and a free throw sending the teams to the break with the Lady Wave owning a 20-12 advantage.
The two Miami Valley League teams played even in the third period, 7-7 but not before the Lady Trojans would open third quarter play with 7-unanswered points to trail 20-19 at 4:18 in the quarter. The Greenville girls stepped up play at both ends of the court using their own 7-0 run to close out third quarter play leading 27-19.
“I had to shift people around in our offense because we wanted to take some of their better defenders, their enforcers out of the play,” Kerns noted. “So a girl like Natea (Davidson) who runs back door had (Tia) Bass guarding her. We took her to the opposite side just to clear out the lane for Haleigh (Behnken) to go or Morgan (Gilbert) and they understood their role tonight. They did a really good job.”
Bass came into the night averaging 12.5 points per game for Troy to go along with a team leading 8-rebounds per contest. The Troy senior was held to 1-point on the night going 1-2 at the line.
Behnken paced Greenville in third quarter scoring with 4-points and Gilbert added a 3-pointer for the Lady Wave.
Leading by 8 to open fourth quarter play, the Lady Trojans continued to chip away at Greenville’s lead, but it was the Lady Wave pulling away at the end to preserve the win for Greenville.
“We were very aggressive on the offensive end,” Coach Kerns said following the game. “We made them foul us early which really helped us as the game played out.”
The Lady Wave’s aggressive offensive play had the team going 19-28 at the line while Troy was 2-5 at the charity stripe.
“We were 19-28, which is 68-percent,” Kerns stated, “but a lot better than that 50 percent the last time.”
Morgan Gilbert led Greenville and all scorers with a game high 21-points. Haleigh Behnken chipped in 15-points for the Lady Wave.
BOXSCORE:
GREENVILLE 42, TROY 35
GREENVILLE – M. Gilbert 21, H. Behnken 15, A. Yoder 2, N. Davidson 2, L. McKinney 2 – TOTALS 7 19-28 3 42
TROY – Macy Taylor 20. B. Siler 6, MaKenna Taylor 3, L. Borchers 2, E. McCann 2, T. Bass 1, L. James 1 – TOTALS 12 2-5 3 35
3-POINTERS
Greenville 3 (M. Gilbert 2, H. Behnken 1)
Troy 3 (Macie Taylor 2, Makenna Taylor 1)
SCORE by QUARTERS:
06-14-07-15 42 Greenville
07-05-07-16 35 Troy