Boyle County handled Danville’s pressure to secure the No. 2 seed in the 45th District, winning 57-44 on Friday.

The Admirals stuck with a man-to-man defense throughout the game, and that ball pressure caused problems for the Rebels at times — but when Boyle worked through that pressure, size inside was too much for Danville to handle.
Gracie Edmiston finished with a game-high 23 points with 11 two-point baskets. She was honored after the game for breaking the 1,000 point milestone for her career. 

Her teammate, Danielle Roney, also had a memorable night. She brought down 13 rebounds, putting her at 907 for her career. That sets a new record in Boyle County girls basketball history, a record that was set in 1978.

“I thought when we looked inside, we had opportunities to score,” Boyle County head coach Greg Edwards said. “Sometimes we get caught up in trying to dribble the ball too much, but when we could move the ball, Gracie did a really good job pinning inside and so did Lauren (Steinhauer).”

Danville made runs at Boyle’s lead — Edmiston scored eight of the first 10 points in the game, but the Admirals fought back to cut the Rebels’ lead to 18-15 just before halftime. Boyle ended the first half on a 4-0 run to take a 22-15 lead into the break.

Danville’s man-to-man defense wasn’t causing many turnovers, but neither team shot well in the first half.

In the second half, things changed. Boyle opened with an 8-0 run in the half and took a 40-25 lead into the fourth quarter.

That’s when Danville made its run, cutting the Rebels’ lead down to seven points with under three minutes to play.

“I really thought, as long as we had good ball pressure, it would give us a much better chance of getting steals and creating easy baskets,” Danville head coach Clifford Berry said. “It really started to work right there in the fourth. The problem is we’ve still got to get some of our younger players to learn how to play man-to-man defense. They just haven’t played enough basketball to learn where to help your teammates. That’s something we’ll learn and I told them over the next few weeks we’ll improve. Because that’s what we have to play.”

Even though Boyle had a double-digit lead for much of the third quarter, Berry stuck with man-to-man for a simple reason.

“I was scared to go to zone, to be totally honest,” he said. “(Boyle), if you let them stand and shoot threes, they’re going to go in the basket. I didn’t want to go zone because I thought it would kill us.”

Edwards said he was proud of the way his perimeter players stepped up, particularly as Edmiston fouled out in the third quarter.

“I thought our perimeter people came in and did a good job, Keely (Bowling) came in and hit a big shot for us,” Edwards said. “McKayla (Baker) has been fighting the flu, we weren’t really sure how much she could give us tonight. Lindsey Wren and Kasey McGirr, we had people come in off of the bench who played well. I had a couple more that I really wanted to get some minutes tonight that we just didn’t get an opportunity to work in, but down the road they’ll help us.”

Berry said he’ll watch the film and show his young team just how close the game was — closer than they thought.

“That’s what we keep telling them, you’re going to make mistakes,” Berry said. “At this point, I’m trying to get them to learn to fight through adversity. We go through film and they’ll learn from it. It’s just being young, they don’t understand that a seven-point game is right there in your grasp. They give into it sometimes.”

Boyle’s defense was strong against the area’s leading scorer Ivy Turner, who torched the Rebels for 34 points earlier this season.

“I liked our defense. We did a good job,” Edwards said. “Our gameplan was to make sure we didn’t give Ivy many opportunities in the lane. She got some, good players are going to do that, but I thought our defense for the most part played well. Clifford has done a good job with them, they’ve got a lot of kids who have made progress and he’s doing good things there.

Turner finished with a team-high 13 points. Carolina Gonzalez had eight points and the Admirals finished with eight different players on the score sheet.

“We keep showing that we have a bright future,” Berry said. “I get irritated, I get frustrated because I want to win so bad. But at the end of the day, we’re still getting better, we’re still learning. We’re going to be a problem for the future.”

Edwards was proud of the way his team ended a three-game skid, including two games to Lincoln County.

“We’re just trying to get back to playing some good, team basketball,” he said. “I thought we made some strides at that tonight. We had two tough ones back-to-back, three district games like that is kind of rough.”

 

Box score

 

DANVILLE 6 9 10 19 — 44

At BOYLE 13 9 18 17 — 57

 

Points

 

BOYLE (16-6, 4-2):  Gracie Edmiston 23, McKayla Baker 11, Rachel Leath 7, Danielle Roney 6, Lauren Steinhauer 4, Kasey McGirr 3, Keely Bowling 3.

DANVILLE (10-12, 1-3): Ivy Turner 13, Carolina Gonzalez 8, Lara Akers 5, Jenna Akers 5, Tyliah Bradshaw 4, Madison Terrell 2, Desiree Tandy 1.