By Noah Dalton
FRENCH LICK — Mitchell’s streak of road games continued on Tuesday, as the Bluejackets played their fourth consecutive game away from The Hive, this time taking on Patoka Lake Athletic Conference opponent Springs Valley.
Coming into the game, Mitchell struggled to start the season with an 0-7 record and a string of lopsided loses in recent games during a tough stretch of the team’s schedule.
Things certainly weren’t going to ease up for the Bluejackets in this matchup, where they were set to take on the defending confernce champion Blackhawks.
After a slow night on offense for Mitchell where the team shot just 12% from the field (4/34), those difficulties continued, with the Bluejackets falling in defeat 43-12.
The two sides were squared up at two points each for the first few minutes of the matchup, before Springs Valley corrected course and jumped out to an early lead.
From there, the total jumped for the Blackhawks, scoring 12 points by the end of the first quarter and extending it to 20 by the end of the first half. All the while, Mitchell was unable to find a basket, spending the better part of the half, including the entire second quarter, without finding the bottom of the net.
The managed to end their cold streak midway through the third, when Paisley Modglin knocked down a mid-range jumper. They’d grab another couple of points in the period on split free-throw trips from Abigail Fountain and Asiah Saunders, but it wasn’t enough to erase the deficit that had swelled up early on, as Springs Valley managed to earn a running clock due to the IHSAA’s 35-point mercy rule early into the fourth quarter on their way to the win.
Mitchell head coach Dakota Brasher credited the Blackhawks and their defensive gameplan on the night, as they looked to take away the Bluejackets’ three-point opportunities, forcing them to find scoring from elsewhere.
“They came in and had a really good game plan, so credit to them. They took away our three point line, and that’s what we’ve been trying to do. That’s our identity,” said Brasher. “You have to make adjustments. If they’re taking away the three point line, we’ve got to be able to have girls that can attack on the dribble and get two feet in the paint, and we just struggled with that tonight. I thought we lacked aggressiveness on the offensive side for much of the first half.”
Springs Valley had two scorers in double figures; Maci Eckerty, who scored a game-high 15 points, including a perfect 6/6 from the free-throw line and Gracie Breedlove, who added 12 points.
Scoring for Mitchell were Gracie Kohlhaas, who knocked down two threes in the fourth quarter for six points, Gwen Eastridge, who scored the team’s first bucket in the first quarter to finish with two points, Modglin, who scored two points, with Saunders and Fountain each adding one.
Brasher felt his team played a solid game defensively, and will use that effort as a building block for the future, as they look to improve their offensive output in future games.
“It was a slow paced game, but 43 points is a good number to be at. 12 is obviously not the good number to be at, so defensively, we did some really good things,” he said. “Offensively, the fourth quarter I think we can build on. We had some good plays that we could show on film, but this was the first time a team has played us like that, so we have to make adjustments on it.”
