Lady Hornets outpace Tiger Cubs

Bethany Burgeson goes up for a shot at home Saturday. She scored seven points for the Tiger Cubs. (Banner Graphic/JAY LOCKETT)

The Greencastle girls' basketball team did its best to combat the athleticism of Beech Grove at home Saturday, but in the end the Lady Hornets were able to walk away with the victory 52-43, giving GHS its first loss of the year.

"They jumped out on us early," GHS coach Brad Key said. "They have some very good basketball players. No. 3 (Beech Grove's Cameron Cardenas) is a sophomore and she causes problems. We knew she was going to. We just want to eliminate as many silly turnovers as we possibly can."

Key said that of the 19 first-half points by the Hornets, at least eight were off of GHS turnovers.

"We've got to eliminate those things from happening," Key said. "Watching the film from last year, Beech Grove really took it to us and our effort was bad. This year no matter what we wanted to make sure we had good effort and I thought we had the effort. We played hard. We made some silly mistakes but in the fourth game of the year you'll make some silly mistakes. We just have to learn from them."

The Lady Tiger Cubs were only down 33-30 going into the fourth quarter. But Beech Grove got the early jump in the fourth, starting the quarter with a 6-2 run and GHS could not catch up.

Key said the Tiger Cub team's focus is where he wants it and it'll just take more working on the fundamentals in practice to shore up the offensive errors.

"I really enjoy coaching this team," Key said. "This is a fun team because there is a lot of growth to be had. So we just got to make sure we are getting better every day. We'll just get to practice on Monday to get ready for Southmont on Tuesday."

GHS' (3-2) match with Southmont (1-3) will be its last before the Putnam County Tournament where the Tiger Cubs will play Cloverdale (0-4) in the first game Friday at 6 p.m.

At Greencastle

Beech Grove 17 3 13 19 -- 52

Greencastle 9 10 11 13 -- 43

Tiger Cub Scoring

Bragg 8, Barker 7, Burgeson 7, Smith 6, White 6, Ray 2

Beech Grove Scoring:

Cardenas Cameron 20, Folks 10, Storms 10, Spurgeaon 5, Giller 4, McGregor 2, Pich 1