Gallery by Heather Belcher
New Richmond – Summers County felt it had closed the gap on two-time defending state champion Wyoming East.
Instead a chasm has grown between the two illustrious programs.
Wyoming East all-stater Abi Baker scored 17 points in the second quarter Wednesday night as the Lady Warriors rolled to a 61-34 victory over the Lady Bobcats in New Richmond.
The visitors suffered from many of the same woes they have in years past at East – turnovers. After committing 24 in last year’s sectional championship loss, Summers committed 19 Friday with 16 of them coming off East steals.
The live-ball turnovers allowed East to attack in transition and effectively put the game away early.
“We kind of got into our rhythm and it was on defense,” East head coach Ryan Davidson said. “We started pushing the ball and we put more pressure on the ball. We actually went to a zone, which really messed them up because it was a match up, but we trapped out of it and I think that caused them a lot of trouble.”
Summers stumbled early, falling behind 9-2 before rallying to make it a 14-10 game. But the wheels quickly fell off.
Fifteen of Summers’ turnovers came in the opening half with eight in the decisive second quarter.
“We didn’t score,” Summer head coach Rick Blevins said. “They just really took us out of the game early. They took over the game, they dominated us from start to finish. 
I mean, that’s pretty much the story. We didn’t put up much of a fight in my opinion. So we kind of got what we deserved. 
They’re a really good team. They shouldn’t be beating us like that. I mean, they could have named the score tonight. 
They could have beat us 100 to 30 or 100 to 20 if they wanted to.”
Using four points each from Avery Lilly and Abby Persinger, Summers kept pace with East early but after the former cut the deficit to four points at 14-10, a long drought ensued.
The next time Summers registered a point, was nearly eight minutes later at the 1:58 mark of the second quarter by which point the visitors trailed 34-10.
The lead was 19-10 after the first quarter, capped by a Cadee Blackburn 3. From there East’s other all-stater in Baker took over. In the second quarter alone she went 8 of 10 from the field, coming away with three steals to power her high-scoring frame. All but one of her buckets came at the rim with teammate Alivia Monroe grabbing three steals to help hit Baker in transition as well.
“They were doing a lot of stepping on Cadee and Kyndal’s toes and running them off the line,” Davidson said. “They weren’t gonna give them anything, and they were kind of in a triangle-and-two so it allowed us to cut the lane with Abi off the move.”
“She is really fast and she gets to the rim,” Blevins said. “
She gets the ball right to the rim and and finishes. So we got to do a much better job with her next time play. She is a really good player, but she shouldn’t be scoring 17 in a quarter. 
I mean, she had a great night. She really did.”
Abby Perisinger finally broke Summers’ skid with a three-point play but it did nothing to turn the tide of a game that saw East lead 42-15 at the break.
The lead grew to as many as 33 points in the second half.
“We threw the ball to them a bunch of times,” Blevins said. “We just threw it, it was like, ‘I wanted it out of my hands, so I’m just gonna throw it and hope somebody on my team catches it.’ That’s not good enough. 
We’ve seen that before. We haven’t seen it this year until tonight. So, hopefully we can fix that and maybe play a little better next time.”
For East the game snapped a 10-day layoff due to weather related cancellations. Davidson had reservations about his team’s performance prior to the game due to the layoff but they were wiped away early in a game where he was able to dig into his bench in the third quarter.
“There were a couple times where I thought our passes were off, maybe a bit high, a bit low,” Davidson said. “We weren’t hitting people in shot pocket like we normally which this team is capable of doing. But other than that, I was actually really happy, but man, they worked really hard the last three days and they couldn’t wait to see somebody else.”
Baker led all scorers with 23 points while Blackburn (16) and Monroe (11) joined her in double figures. Lilly and Perisnger paced Summers with 12 each.
SC: 10 5 7 12 – 34
WE: 19 23 12 7 – 61
Summers County
Avery Lilly 12, Abby Persinger 12, Cheyenne Smith 4, Carly Persinger 6
Wyoming East
Cadee Blackburn 16, Abi Baker 23, Kyndal Lusk 1, Alivia Monroe 11, Gabby Cameron 4, Rylee Brown 3, Kaylee Hodges 1, Carlee Lane 2
