Hinton – Turnovers have plagued Westside all season.
A flip of the calendar couldn’t remedy that Thursday.
The Renegades committed 18 turnovers in the first half of their contest against Summers County, falling 66-27 in Hinton Thursday evening.
For the visitors from Wyoming County there was never a reprieve from the miscues, as they gave the ball away 16 times in the opening half, quickly falling out of favor in a regional game.
“That’s been our Achilles heel all year,” Westside head coach Jamie Lusk said. “I mean, anytime we play a team that put a lot of pressure on you, like Summers or (Wyoming) East or Logan and Tug Valley – all these teams put a lot of pressure on us. We’ve had trouble protecting the ball and some of that is youth. 
I mean, we start five sophomores and first off bench are freshmen. But this is the eighth game of the year. It’s time for us to start growing up a little bit and protecting the ball. We gotta get stronger, we gotta get tougher and we gotta protect the ball better. 
It’s just that that’s been something that we’ve dealt with all year that has to improve.”
For Summers County the miscues were welcome, though they came in a variety of ways.
Throughout the first quarter the Lady Bobcats hung back, waiting to swipe the ball or attack passing lanes. That took pressure off of Westside to advance the ball up the court, something the Renegades took advantage of when they notched an early 6-5 lead.
But a shift to full-court pressure in the second quarter effectively put the game away before halftime.
“I’m not sure they expected that but it’s a good defense for us to play sometimes because we really get after people a lot better instead of just running down here and waiting for them to come to us,” Summers County head coach Rick Blevins said. “We get in a full-court man and just and play good defense, and that helped us tonight. It really got our offense jumpstarted start a little.”
Behind a layup from Karsyn Paynter and a pair of buckets from Sarah Lilly, the Renegades hopped out to an early lead, one erased by the first two of Abby Persinger’s game-high 22 points.
A layup from Jaelynn Boone and another from Persinger off a steal pushed the advantage to 11-6 for the hosts who watched Sarah Lilly snap the skid with a free throw. A three-point play from Kaylee Cole at the end of the opening frame staked Summers to a 15-9 advantage, one that quickly ballooned. A 3 from Avery Lilly highlighted what became a 17-2 run to open the second quarter, seeing the Renegades trail 32-11 before finally snapping the skid on a Paynter layup.
“We knew coming into the game, but we were probably gonna see a lot of stuff, a lot of man to man,” Lusk said. “That’s typical Summers County, I mean ever since I started coaching 18 years ago in 2006 when we played Summers, they always press the ball and do a good job in their man defense and their pressing. It caused us a lot of problems and their quickness and hurt us, but we got to do a better job of getting back on defense too. We don’t get back on defense and but their defense created a lot of that.
“They got a few breakaway layups and we didn’t get back on defense. Our point guard drives and nobody is breaking back. 
The guard is not recognizing that and getting back and our point guard is trying to have to go score and then trying to get back too and you just can’t do that. We gotta learn to to hustle back on defense, but our other girls have got notice that, and we’ve gotta get back to keep from giving these teams so many easy layups.”
Another battle the Renegades lost was the one on the boards, an area they’ve excelled.
They were out-rebounded 29-22, yielding 16 offensive rebounds to Summers which capitalized on the extra opportunities. The 28 turnovers combined with the 16 offensive rebounds allowed Summers to generate 31 (66-35) more shot attempts than Westside.
“At the beginning of the year we rebounded the ball way better than we are right now,” Lusk said. “A lot of that comes from effort. I mean, we got to do a better job of boxing out, which we’ve been trying to work on at at practice a lot. But you can’t give good teams like Summers County two and three extra chances to schore. 
I mean, they’re going to score. We try to preach to them to keep teams to one shot but tonight we did not. Summer did a good job crashing the boards and we did not do our job in boxing that boxing out. We got to keep improving on that and hopefully next time we play in that number will improve.”
Avery Lilly joined Persinger in double figures with 19 points while Sarah Lilly led Westside with 11. Paynter added 10 in the loss.
W: 9 7 6 5 – 27
SC: 15 19 18 14 – 66
Westside
Karsyn Paynter 10, Sarah Lilly 11, Kaylin Matney 1, Alaina Lester 3, Gabby Brown 2
Summers County
Avery Lilly 19, Abby Persinger 22, Cheyenne Stewart 7, Hadley Bennett 7, Jaelynn Boone 6, Kaylee Cole 5
