The Glenn Hills Spartans showed up over 40 minutes late for their game Friday against Statesboro. They probably should have just stayed at home as the Lady Blue Devils delivered a 73-0 shutout and the boys followed that up with a 78-48 victory.
In the girl’s contest the Blue Devils came out poised to break the clock as they took a 56-0 halftime lead. The size of Statesboro seemed to scare the Spartans into driving into the lane and the settled for chucking shots from outside.
“We came out playing hard and they had a lot of trouble with our pressure,” said SHS coach Marty Holder. “We try not to worry about who we are playing and just have intensity from the start. Even though we had that halftime lead we felt like there were some things we could have done better.”
In the second half the Blue Devils sat back in a zone and the quarters were shortened to only six minutes allowing Holder to get playing time for some of his girl’s who will probably only play in junior varsity games.
“The only real thing you get from a game like this is our younger girls got a chance to play in a varsity game,” Holder said. “I have never seen or been a part of a shutout. It wasn’t our intention to try and do that but you can’t tell the girls to just let them score. We sat back in a zone in the second half and they just didn’t hit.”
Kennedy Myers led the way with 16 points and 13 rebounds. Janiyah Spells added 10 points and six boards and Kayla Hunter had 10 points.
In the boy’s game Statesboro took a 18-10 lead after the first quarter and then turned things on in the second led by Ja’Caiden Cone who had 11 of his game high 38 points to help them to a 36-21 halftime lead. They’d extend that to 53-37 after the third and outscored the Spartans 25-11 in the fourth
“I thought in the beginning our leaders weren’t really doing what we expect from them,” said coach Keith LeGree. “The execution on offense and defense was poor and we weren’t running the game plan. I thought we started playing much better on defense and that’s usually what gets us going. I felt like Ja’Caiden played well but we need some of our other guys to chip in when we start playing better teams.”
The Statesboro boys improve to 3-0 and the girls to 2-1. The Blue Devils next home game will be Saturday Dec. 13 against Effingham County with the girl’s game starting at 5:00.
