MORGANTOWN – The Morgantown girls basketball team earned a solid victory over the No. 3 Class AAA squad, Nitro, on Saturday afternoon inside the Rowdie Center at Morgantown High School.
Morgantown (7-2) led by only a point entering the fourth quarter before outscoring the Wildcats 25 to 8 in the final quarter to come away with a 70-52 victory.
Four Mohigans scored in double figures, led by junior Brenna Nelson with 20 points. She was joined by freshman Maddie Ancell (11), senior Alyssa Tingler (10), and sophomore Sydney Deusenberry, who finished with 13 points, seven assists, six steals, and two rebounds. MHS earned 15 steals as a team in the contest.
Nitro (5-3) was led in scoring by senior Carson Jones, who poured in a game-high 22 points on 10 of 11 shooting from the field.
“They’re (Nitro) a great team, and honestly, they’d be top five in our class too, I think,” MHS head coach John Fowkes said. “Their coaches made some good adjustments coming out of the locker room in the second half with Jones underneath, and we had to adjust our effort against her. We fronted her more and had backside help, and she only scored one basket in the fourth. It worked, and we closed it out.”
MHS entered the halftime break with a 12-point lead, 37-25, but the Wildcats won the third quarter 19 to 8, cutting the hosts’ lead to just one point before the final eight minutes.
But the Mohigans came out of the huddle in between the third and fourth quarter and exploded for a scoring run that put the game out of reach in the final frame.
The one-point lead swelled to eight, 52-44, 90 seconds into the fourth on a triple by Ancell.
“That’s two games in a row we’ve closed the game out well in the fourth,” Fowkes said. “We scored 24 points last game, then 25 tonight. We are in pretty good game shape, and I think that has a lot to do with it. We can wear teams down while still knocking down our shots. Our bench goes out and produces, and when you have players as we do coming off the bench, it makes your team kind of different.”
With only one senior on the roster and multiple freshmen playing key minutes, Fowkes knows the team’s success can only come from every single player working as one.
“We’re starting to gel out there truly,” he said. “You can see it. They’re sharing the ball at a high level, and that’s just them believing in each other as teammates. When we do the right things and play hard to the entirety of the game, we are pretty hard to beat.”
MHS closed the game on a 9 to 2 run to close the door on any chance of a comeback by Nitro. The Mohigans improved to 7-2 on the year and will return to the Rowdie Center on Tuesday night for a massive matchup of top teams in Class AAAA against Parkersburg at 7:30 p.m.
BOX SCORE
Morgantown 70, Nitro 52
Nitro 9 16 19 8 – 52
Morgantown 17 20 8 25 – 70
Nitro (5-3) – Jones 10 2-2 22 Cawley 3 3-5 10 Adams 2 4-4 8 Elkins 3 1-2 8 Ketty 2 0-0 4
Morgantown (7-2) – Nelson 7 4-4 20 Deusenberry 5 2-2 13 Ancell 3 4-4 11 Tingler 5 0-0 10 Messerly 3 0-0 7 Young 3 0-0 6 Clinton 1 1-2 3
3pt goals made: Morgantown 5 (Nelson 2 Messerly 1 Deusenberry 1 Ancell 1); Nitro 2 (Cawley 1 Elkins 1).
