On Wednesday night, the Alleghany Mountaineers (1-1) girls basketball team met a tough out of conference opponent in the Liberty Minutemen (1-0), who gave the Mountaineers their first loss of the season by the final score of 53-42.
The Mountaineers struggled for majority of the first quarter as the team was held scoreless for over the first five minutes of the game before Kelsey Nicely made the teams first points with a layup.
After a few made buckets from the Minutemen, the Mountaineers found themselves trailing by an early eight points at 10-2.
With just over a minute to go in the first quarter and only two points on the scoreboard, the Mountaineers grabbed a big three point field goal from Kendell Keene to cut the lead to 10-5.
Heading into the second quarter, the team trailed by seven points, 12-5. In the teams season opener, the Mountaineers put up 29 first quarter points.
In the second quarter, the Minutemen, jumped out to a 10 point lead at 22-12 with just over a minute left in the first half.
The Mountaineers scored six unanswered points to cut the Minutemen’s lead to four points by halftime. The six point scoring run was highlighted by a buzzer beater two point shot by Erin Harden.
With momentum going into the second half after their scoring run to end the first half, the Mountaineers grabbed the first bucket of the second half to cut the lead to just two points.
The Minutemen though, were not phased by the Mountaineers scoring run and went on a scoring run of their own with eight straight points to regain a double digit lead at 30-20.
During the scoring run for the Minutemen, the shots were not falling for the Mountaineers. The team had great looks and open shot attempts, but could not get their shots to drop.
The Mountaineers went on a scoring drought of over four minutes before Harden made a two point shot to get the team back within single digits with just over three minutes left in the third quarter.
The Minutemen would make a few more shots to take an 11 point lead heading into the final quarter of regulation.
Early on in the fourth quarter, the Minutemen, grabbed their biggest lead of the game of 14 points, but the Mountaineers kept on crawling back and got back within striking distance after Keene made one of two free throws to cut the lead to eight points.
Following the made free throw by Keene, the Minutemen got a big three-point play to put them up 47-36 which all but sealed the victory for the team.
Keene finished the game with a team high 18 points while Harden had 11.
The Mountaineers were coming off of their 66-point victory the previous night in their season opener against Bath County.
The Mountaineers will be back on the court on Monday when they host Auburn at 6:00 p.m.
1st 2nd 3rd 4th Final
AHS 5 13 7 17 42
LHS 12 10 14 17 53
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