Sports
Athens Boys And Girls Stuck At Two Wins
By: Troy Staudenmaier
Posted on:
The Athens Bulldog’s struggles continue as both teams failed to come out with the W this week. As we reach the half way point in the season, both teams remain stuck at two wins each.
The Lady Bulldogs fell short twice this week. First, heading to a strong, three loss Federal Hocking team and faced defeat again 57-42.
After finding themselves down at the half 32-19, the bulldogs second half strategy was to slow down the pace of the game, and cut down the turnovers.
Going into the game the Lady Bulldogs averaged around 20 turnovers per game, and tonight was no different. At the end of the crushing loss, Athens found themselves finishing with a total of 25 turnovers with only 9 steals of their own.
In the scoring department, Lily Mills led the way for the Lady Bulldogs with 13 points, and Laura Manderick following close behind with 12 points and seven rebounds.
In the Lady Bulldogs second game of the week, the Wellston Golden Rockets made their way to the Plains hoping to continue their hot streak.
Wellston coming off a 4-1 five game stretch, and looked to shut down the Lady Bulldogs.
However, the girls did not go down without a fight. Falling only 55-50, the Lady Bulldogs were kept out of the win column.
Junior, Kaylee Stewart, led Athens with a double- double, recording 18 points and 10 rebounds.
After recording yet another game with 20 turnovers, Coach Seth Matheny says it is a huge part of what is preventing this team from winning, along with not playing the full four quarters.
The boy’s team story is not much different from the ladies.
Going into the weekend the Bulldogs have just one win in their past five games. As the bulldogs traveled to Wellston hoping to turn their luck around and get back to the dominant season they had seen last year.
Unfortunately, luck was not on the Bulldogs side as the Golden Rockets barely scrape by in a nail biter 62-61.
Wellston coming off an embarrassing loss to Wheelersburg 83-44 and made sure that they were not going to let that happen twice in a row.
After their one point loss to Wellston, the Bulldogs looked to get over the slump the very next night as Logan came to A town. Coming off a one point loss the bulldogs were hungry to finally get another tally in the W column.
However, playing back-to-back games is not an easy task for any team, and it truly showed for the struggling Bulldogs team.
Logan blew out the Bulldogs on their home court with a depressing score of 68-37.
The Bulldogs offense struggled in the beginning of the season but averaged 55 points in their last five games, but a strong Logan defense held the Bulldogs to less than 40 points.
The third time this season the Bulldogs have found themselves in that stat category.
Both teams hope to bounce back as they both have very big rivalry games next on the schedule.
The boys try to snap their 1-5 slump as they welcome first place, and a red-hot Vinton County team at home on Tuesday. The Vikings are just 6-4 on the season, but are 6-1 in their past 7 games.
The lady bulldogs currently riding a five game losing streak, hope to break this pattern as they travel to Alexander on Thursday night to take on a very good Lady Spartan team.
The Lady Spartans had just suffered their first loss since December 7th after falling short to Nelsonville.
Alexander is 10-2 on the season, but has only suffered losses to in conference rivals, and the Lady Bulldogs hope this game will be no different. j