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Tri-Village’s
Shaye Thomas (24) avoids taking an elbow from
Franklin Monroe’s Allison Hildebrand
after the Jet junior pulled down a
rebound during the title game of the Burkett Tournament Saturday
at
Tri-Village. The Patriots defended their title with a 78-40 victory
over the Lady Jets.
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Lady Patriots defend
Burkett title
Linkous named MVP
By George Starks
Sports Editor
CNO Photos By George Starks
NEW MADISON- It came as no surprise that Tri-Village would defend its
Bill Burkett title. In fact, it was expected.
It came as no surprise that Lady Patriot senior Kayla Linkous would end
up being the tournament MVP. That was expected too. Linkous scored 56
points in the two games played and pulled down well over 20 rebounds.
For the second year in a row and the third in the last four,
Tri-Village reigned supreme in its own tournament with a 78-40 victory
over Franklin Monroe in the championship game of the 24th Annual Bill
Burkett Girls Basketball Tournament.
Winning by 38 points, Patriot coach Brad Gray was happy with the win
but…
“We scored 78 points and looked bad doing it,” said Gray. “I don’t
think we one point tonight that I feel was our kind of basketball.
Especially in the first half. I thought we looked frazzled and
offensively we were doing things that were uncharacteristic of us. We
scored 78 points and missed a ton of shots. We just didn’t shoot the
ball well. In the second half, we settled down and played a lot better
but it wasn‘t our brand of basketball.”
Even on a night when the Patriots didn‘t play their best 32 minutes in
the first half, Tri-Village still netted 34 points while holding the
Lady Jets to 17, playing solid defense.
“We knew. We had to become a better team on defense,” Gray stated.
“Tonight is the kind of defense we’re talking about and that’s where we
need to be defensively.”
If the Pats offense was lacking in the first half, the defense wasn’t.
Patriot junior Teha Richards set the defensive tone of the game right
from the tip.
“Teha got two five second calls right away,” said Gray. “You can’t put
a point value on what she‘s done on the defensive end of the floor for
us. You can talk about Kayla getting 32 points but on defense, Teha is
just as valuable, really rattling the other team’s players that she‘s
guarding and other players kind of feed off that. Haley Gray (FM) is an
all-conference player and she was in her head. So Teha has really
stepped it up on defense.”
Before the Patriots took the floor Friday against Arcanum, the message
was clear. Defend ‘The Battleground.’
“This is our tournament and we wanted to make sure the trophy stayed
here,” said Gray. “We wanted to send K.J. (Linkous) out as a tournament
champion and we did that. This is one of our goals every year. We want
to win the Bill Burkett title. We came out and were able to do that and
it starts the year off the way we want to start it off.”
The Patriots (2-0) were led on the floor by Linkous with 32 points and
12 rebounds. Richards chipped in with 12 while Shaye Thomas added 11 in
support.
Franklin Monroe (1-1) was paced by Gray with 18 tallies.
The Pats will be idle until Thursday night when they host Lehman
Catholic while the Jets will host Cross County Conference rival
Covington on the same night.
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The
Tri-Village Lady Patriots, 2011 Burkett Champions.
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The
all tournament team from left to right: Arcanum-Abbey
O’Donnell; Franklin Monroe-Haley Gray;
Tri-Village - Shaye Thomas,
Krystal Falknor, Kayla Linkous (MVP) and Teha Richards.
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