FAYETTEVILLE — Fayetteville girls basketball hosted Richards High School Jan. 31 at Lions Gym in Fayetteville and won by a final score of 42-31.
As Richards jumped out to an early lead, Fayetteville had a big second half with good transition ball and controlling the game on offense to ultimately win by dou ble-digits. "We came out of the game kind of sloppy," said Fayetteville head girl’s basketball coach Marcus Sodek. “We haven’t played in like a week. We've had a lot of games that had gotten canceled.
As far as our defense, really did nothing different in the second half. Just asked the girls at half - time to kind of turn up the inten sity a little bit. We didn’t change much on offense either. That kind of came with our defense. We got more turnovers and more fast break layups. They went to man there for a while and I felt it kind of spread them out and opened the floor up more for us out of the zone."
Fayetteville junior guard Devynn Moeckel scored 13 points on the night and impressed with her ball handling skills up and down the court.
“Honestly, I just gained a lot of confidence to lead my team,"
Moeckel said. “My team is very young and we’re all pretty new and getting used to each other."
Both teams went back and
forth in the first quarter with a bunch of layups from Fayette -
ville and some free throws along with a three pointer from Rich - ards for a 10-10 tie at the end of the first quarter. Another close quarter in the second led to a a layup from freshman Paige Jurecka, then a free throw from Moeckel to take a 14-11 lead with 4:05 to go.
Richards answered with a jumper and a three pointer in the final two minutes to make for a 16-16 tie score once again at half -
time.
After a close start to the third quarter, Moeckel took over the rest of the quarter with her tran -
sition offense and ability to score on fast breaks with a layup, jump - er, and four free throws to give Fayetteville a small lead through- out the rest of the quarter. A three from the wing by Richards with a minute to play resulted in a 30-26 advantage for Fayetteville at the end of the third quarter.
Richards hit an early three to
start the fourth quarter to put it at 30-29, which was followed by the
Lady Lions going on a tear with
tons of layups throughout the quarter en route to a 42-31 win.
