Lady Jays extend win streak to 10

Playing offense is fun, playing defense wins games.

The Jefferson City Lady Jays are having fun winning games.

The Lady Jays ran their winning streak to 10 games Monday night, downing the Ozark Lady Tigers 61-35 at Fleming Fiedhouse. Jefferson City is allowing just 36.1 points per game during the streak.

"We stress communication and everybody needs to be moving," Jefferson City coach Brad Conway said. "When we do that, we can make it hard on teams to run what they want to run.

"We can disrupt their offense."

Jefferson City never trailed Monday night, scoring the first six points of the game on its way to a 15-7 lead after one quarter.

The teams swapped points for much of the second quarter. With 2:08 to go before halftime, a 3-pointer by Ozark's Bre Johnson pulled the Lady Tigers to within nine at 25-16.

But Jefferson City closed the half on an 11-3 run to take a 36-19 advantage into intermission. Megan Foster had six points in the spurt for the Lady Jays, including a short jumper with :02 on the clock.

"They'd make a run and we'd come back with one of our own," Conway said.

Ozark tried to battle back at the start of the third quarter, opening with an 8-2 run to cut the deficit to 11. Jefferson City answered with an 8-0 run of its own to make it 46-27 early in the final period. The Lady Jays did not commit a turnover in the fourth quarter and had just nine in the game.

The 26-point final margin was the biggest of the contest.

"We did a good job of executing our offense, we were making some good decisions," Conway said.

Those good decisions started with sharing the basketball. Four Lady Jays scored in double figures, with Caitin Anderson leading the way with 14 points.

Foster and Nicole Martin added 13 each, while Micah Linthacum came off the bench to score 12.

"We played within ourselves, stayed the course with what we wanted to do offensively," Conway said.

Johnson was the lone Ozark (10-9) player to score in double figures, totaling 12 points.

Conway, in his first season at Jefferson City, is happy with where his team is at with three weeks to go in the regular season.

"We're trying to build a foundation," he said. "The kids are buying into what we're trying to incorporate.

"Does it always look pretty? No. But we're making strides, we have room for improvement. But we're getting good effort."

After a heavy rotation of games early in the season, Jefferson City (18-3) will be off until Feb. 11 when the Lady Jays will host the Rock Bridge Bruins.

"We don't want to get complacent," Conway said. "We're going to have time to get rested and healed, work on things we need to work on."

In Monday's JV game, Ozark defeated Jefferson City 43-42 in overtime. Sydney Crockett had 11 points for the Lady Jays.