Grant County 64, Ludlow 53

Hunt, Carr, Hurley grab double figures to beat Ludlow

DRY RIDGE, Ky-In the first quarter the Braves senior guard, Trevor Hunt, drained three baskets from the perimeter and finished with 23 for the night, which led all scorers. Teammate, Tyler Carr had ten in the first period and finished with 18 points and Andrew Hurley had 10 points.

Ludlow's Jerad Howard had a double-double with 14 boards and 14 points. Teammate Chris Yates led the Panthers' scoring effort with 15 points, and Cody MItchell had 13.

Ludlow's defense was feisty with eight blocked shots and the home team had a difficult time controlling the ball and coughed it up a couple times also.

         1   2   3   4  F
LHS 12  5 15 14 53
GC   17  6 25 12 64

GRANT COUNTY
Trevor Hunt 8 1 23
Tyler Carr 3 2 18
Andrew Hurley 3 1 10
Mario Coleman 6 1 6
Ben Shipp 3 2 4
Logan Cummins 2 1 3
Austin Johnson 8 6 0

LUDLOW
Chris Yates 0 5 15
Jerad Howard 14 3 14
Mitchell Cody 6 1 13
Geoffrey Thornsburg 6 4 5
Jacob Smalley 9 0 4
Drew Gaiser 4 0 2

"[Ludlow] didn't press us at all tonight until the end," said Grant County head coach Jim Hicks laughingly. "Knowing what they know now, they probably should have pressed us more."

Grant County's defense was too much, though, for the visiting team. The Braves caused the Panthers to turn the ball over 26 times, 15 of those were steals.

"We really come out and I thought Mario Coleman really sparked us in the third quarter defensively," said Hicks. "Andrew 'Petey' Hurley made some plays. Our defense in the second half was a whole lot better than in the first half."

Braves' head coach Jim Hicks is still coaching to the end of the game. With 30 seconds left and up by nine, he called a time-out, because of turnovers.

"We had two straight, back to back, offensive press situations and we turned the ball over," explained Hicks. "We wanted to make sure, I said we're going to get one more chance tonight to run our press offense and then we'll carry that over into tomorrows practice."

Grant County improved to 11-8 on the year with the win. The Braves have nine games left in the season. That includes at least one game in the KHSAA District 32 tournament. The Braves still have a chance at attaining its preseason goal of 20 wins.

"We played our best game of the year here against a team that won the All "A" region, a very good Owen County team and beat them," said Hicks. "Then we lose a couple of games and get into this, funk. Hopefully this win can springboard us and get us playing good again."

TEAM              Season     District
Simon Kenton   15-6-0      6-0-0
Walton-Verona 12-7-0      4-2-0
Grant County    11-8-0      2-4-0
Williamstown    8-11-0      0-6-0

District 32 seedings are set. With Williamstown going 0-6 and Simon Kenton making a clean sweep, they will meet in the first round of the tournament. Walton-Verona and Grant County will also meet in the first round. WV is the defending tournament champ.