GREENVILLE – The Greenville Lady Wave dropped a season opening overtime heartbreaker to a veteran Eaton Lady Eagles team Saturday night by a 56-54 score.
“I told the girls in the locker room following the game, I am really proud of their effort and just how things kind of played out,” said Greenville coach Rachael Kerns. “As a coach, the things you can’t make them do as far as effort, the heart – there was no question that was all there tonight.”
The Lady Eagles took the opening quarter 17-16 with Haleigh Behnken pacing the Lady Wave with 8-points including a 3-pointer, 3-3 at the line and a 2-point bucket.
The Lady Wave outscored the visitors 10-8 in period No. 2 with Behnken pouring in another 8-points to give Greenville a 1-point 26-25 halftime lead.
Eaton took advantage of the third quarter free throw line to outscore the Lady Wave 18-13, sinking 9-of-11 tosses. Nyesha Wright paced Greenville scoring with 7-points including a 3-pointer sending the teams to the final period of play with the Lady Eagles leading 43-39 in the physical foul-plagued game at both ends of the court.
“If it’s going to be a physical game, out of all of our years of coaching games, this is definitely the year of a team that I think we are going to be able to hold our own,” stated Coach Kerns.
Greenville battled back in fourth quarter play with Morgan Gilbert scoring 6-points including 4-4 at the line. The Lady Wave put 10-points on the board while holding the Lady Eagles to 6-points sending the game to overtime with the score tied at 49.
“Playing in the close games now is only going to help us in February,” Kerns noted.
The Lady Eagles took the overtime period 7-5 to earn the non-conference win.
Greenville was 21-42 at the line, good for 50-percent shooting while Eaton was 18-37 for 48.6-percent.
“You don’t want to say one part of the game is why it happens but when you only shoot 50-percent from the free throw line and you lose by two, it breaks your heart,” said Kerns. “Shooting 40 free throws is fantastic but shooting 50-percent is not fantastic.”
“We beat them in about every category,” Kerns added. “We had more offensive rebounds, we had more defensive rebounds – the just hit a really big shot in overtime and we never hit that really big shot.”
Behnken led all scorers with a game high 24-points for the Lady Wave.
BOXSCORE:
EATON 56, GREENVILLE 54
GREENVILLE – H. Behnken 24, M. Gilbert 13, N. Wright 7, A. Hayes 6, N. Davidson 4 – TOTALS 12 21-42 3 54
EATON – B. Shepard 19, L. Miller 10, O. Baumann 6, L. Shepard 6, A. Earley 5, M. Posey 4, A. Mowen 4, K. Kidwell 2 – TOTALS 10 18-37 6 56
3-POINTERS
Greenville 3 (H. Behnken 2, N. Wright 1)
Eaton 6 (L. Miller 3, B. Shepard 1, M. Posey 1, A. Mowen 1)
SCORE by QUARTERS:
16-10-13-10-05 54 Greenville
17-08-18-06-07 56 Eaton
