By Jeremy Price
Special to WBIW.com
NORTH VERNON – You name it, Jennings County had it on Saturday night.
It was Hall of Fame induction night for both the classes of 2020 and 2021, due to the pandemic, as well as Homecoming for the host Panthers.
On the other hand, you name it, Bedford North Lawrence didn’t have it.
Shooting, rebounding and, most concerning, none of the three E’s.
“Energy, effort and enthusiasm,” Stars coach Jeff Hein said. “They won all three, hands down. We just didn’t show up and match their intensity.”
The result was sudden end of BNL’s four-game winning streak as Jennings County rolled to a 73-48 victory.
BNL got off to a cold-shooting start, hitting just one of its first six 3-point attempts. Jennings County wasn’t exactly clicking on all cylinders at the outset, settling for a 13-8 lead after one quarter.
The Stars did hit their first two 3s of the second quarter with the teams trading baskets. Hein called a timeout after a Colton Staggs bucket cut the deficit to 22-18 in hopes of getting some defensive stops.
“(Trading baskets) wasn’t going to work,” Hein said. “We knew that coming in. We got behind and started forcing some stuff.”
Part of that was 29 total 3-point attempts.
“We tried to play them in a run and gun game,” Hein said. “We can’t play run and gun. That’s not our forte. We have to control the ball better than that. That’s what we’ve done to this point and we’ve got some wins out of that, but we went away from our usual way of playing tonight.”
And the game got away shortly thereafter.
The Panthers (9-3, 1-1 HHC) scored the next nine points, the start of a 17-2 run over the final five minutes of the second quarter for a 39-20 halftime advantage.
Add in the first two baskets of the second half, and the run became 21-2 with the lead reaching 23.
To add insult to injury, it wasn’t the guys at the top of the scouting report doing all the damage for Jennings County.
As a matter of fact, despite having four starters averaging better than 11 points per game, none of them reached double figures on Saturday. But Carson Kent came off the bench to score 20 points with Lane Zahrlaut adding 14.
“The Kent kid, we had no answer for him,” Hein said. “He made some great plays. I looked at halftime and our starters had 18 points, theirs had 14. Their bench just kicked our butt, Kent specifically and others.
“We made some mental mistakes and allowed it to get out of hand, so then we’re playing catchup and we don’t play catchup very well. That was very apparent.”
BNL (5-5, 1-1) would get no closer than 17 points the rest of the second half.
Colton Leach was the only Star in double figures with 15 points as the team suffered through a 20-of-57 (.351) shooting night.
“We struggled in every department tonight,” Hein said. “We had one of those nights where things didn’t go our way.”
And it came on the heels of having a rivalry game against Mitchell postponed on Friday night. The Stars found that out on Thursday and got the day off to clear their minds.
Maybe too clear.
“We turned our Mitchell game plan into the Jennings County game plan, and it didn’t work very well,” Hein said. “Everybody was upset the game wouldn’t get played, but we talked about Jennings on Friday, in walk-through this morning and we still didn’t get the switch flipped the way we need to.”
Now the Stars have a week to lick their wounds and get ready for Seymour.
“It’s not the end of the world, not the last game of the season,” Hein said. “We’ll keep learning. We’ve got a young team, obviously, and we’re still learning lessons. Tonight was a big one.”
BEDFORD NL STARS (48)
3s FGs FTs R F Pts
4 Kaedyn Bennett, f 2-7 2-9 0-0 1 4 6
34 Jett Jones, f 1-4 3-6 0-0 7 3 7
22 Colton Staggs, g 1-6 3-12 0-0 1 3 7
1 Trace Rynders, g 2-5 3-7 0-0 1 1 6
2 Colten Leach, g 2-5 6-16 1-2 8 3 15
10 Dylan Nikirk 0-0 1-2 0-0 0 0 2
20 Dylan Endris 0-0 1-1 0-0 0 1 2
23 Memphis Louden 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0
3 Quincy Pickett 1-2 1-2 0-0 1 0 3
Totals 9-29 20-57 1-2 23 16 48
JENNINGS COUNTY PANTHERS (73)
3s FGs FTs R F Pts
40 Justin Ramey, f 1-2 1-2 0-0 5 1 3
44 Jacob Vogel, c 0-0 4-4 0-1 8 0 8
22 Keegan Manowitz, g 0-2 3-6 1-1 3 3 7
20 Carson McNulty, g 0-4 1-5 0-0 0 0 2
21 Owen Law, g 2-3 2-5 2-2 2 3 8
2 Cole Sigler 1-2 2-3 0-0 4 0 5
3 Skyler Lewis 0-0 0-0 2-2 0 0 2
4 Darius Thomas 0-1 1-2 2-4 2 2 4
5 Carter Kent 4-5 8-11 0-0 3 0 20
30 Cole Marksberry 0-0 0-1 0-0 1 1 0
14 Lane Zohrlaut 1-1 5-7 3-4 5 0 14
25 Layne Suhre 0-0 0-1 0-0 0 0 0
42 Matt Hines 0-0 0-0 0-0 0 0 0
Totals 9-21 27-47 10-14 36 10 73
Bedford NL 8 12 10 18 – 48
Jennings Co. 13 26 9 25 – 73
Turnovers – BNL 11, Jennings County 12
Field goal percentage – BNL 20-57 (.351); JC 27-47 (.574)
Free throw percentage – BNL 1-2 (.500); JC 10-14 (.714)
