Lady Jackets Victorious on Senior Night

By Tim Miller

The Cedarville Lady Jackets defeated the Ohio Valley Fighting Scots 63-41 on Saturday afternoon on Senior Day. Cedarville held the Fighting Scots to a 29 percent field goal percentage during the game.

Cedarville’s Regina Hochstetler was the game’s leading scorer with 18 points on 7-16 shooting. Baylee Bennett added 14 points and shot 4-7 from behind the 3-point line.

Head coach Kari Hoffman said the team’s good defense and hustle helped the team come out on top.

“I was proud of our team’s effort today,” Hoffman said. “They came out on the defensive end and really played well.”

The Lady Jackets’ lone senior Christina McQueen saw a season-high in minutes with 22. She tallied five points, seven rebounds and two blocks.

McQueen transferred from Division I Gardner-Webb University and has played for Cedarville the past two seasons. The senior said her team helped her in what was a difficult transfer process.

“I’ve grown in my spirituality and I’ve grown to love my teammates,” McQueen said. “It was a really hard transition, but they’ve loved on me in my hard days and my good days.”

Cedarville began the game with a 16-2 run during the first seven minutes of the first quarter and ended the quarter with a 16-5 lead. Cedarville’s defense propelled the dominant start to the game, as Ohio Valley shot just 1-14 from the field in the inaugural quarter.

The Fighting Scots used an ugly four minutes of basketball to stall Cedarville’s offense, but couldn’t convert when they had the ball. In the two minutes after a Cedarville timeout, the Lady Jackets took a commanding 27-13 lead.

Ohio Valley continued to play stingy basketball, and the Lady Jackets were unable to extend their lead going into the half. After two quarters of play, Cedarville led 32-18.

Cedarville continued to slowly inch away from the Fighting Scots in the third quarter. A string of strong offensive possessions gave Cedarville enough juice to put the game away. After flirting with a 20-point lead for much of the third quarter, McQueen made a basket to put Cedarville up 48-27 with 1:16 left to give the team its first lead of more than 20 points.

The fourth quarter was similar to the first three. Cedarville continued to dominate on the defensive end. Cedarville’s reserves earned much of the playing time in the fourth quarter, and the Lady Jackets cruised to victory.
Cedarville (18-10, 9-5 G-MAC) will rest until Thursday when they play Alderson Broaddus in the opening round of the 2017 G-MAC Conference Tournament. Cedarville earned the third seed, and won both matchups against the sixth-seeded Battlers this season.

Tim Miller is a freshman journalism student at Cedarville University. Tim loves anything that has to do with sports, and hopes to write about sports for a career after graduating from Cedarville.