GIRLS' BASKETBALL: Hart Co. runs away from Jackson Co. girls with big first half

Jackson County girls’ basketball coach Monty McClure said he doesn’t expect wins every single night but does expect his team to compete each outing.
The second-year Panther coach found the competitive fire a bit lacking in the first half of an 86-35 loss to sixth-ranked Hart County Tuesday. Jackson County trailed 54-18 at halftime en route to a 51-point loss in its Region 8-AAA opener.
“It’s impossible to win the game sometimes,” McClure said. “but we can always compete. And what I was disappointed in wasn’t that we didn’t win the game. It’s going to be tough to beat them. It’s that we in the first half, we just didn’t compete.”
Hart County scored the first 13 points of the game and led by 20 after a quarter. The advantage swelled to 36 at halftime. Much of that was due to Bulldog star Torrion Starks, who put on a show with 25 points in the first half and 31 for the night.
“She’s the best player in our region … it seemed like she could have probably scored as many as she wanted to,” McClure said.
Bailee Bejin led Jackson County with seven points.
Though the game was already decided, McClure said his team picked things up coming out of the halftime locker room.
“Again, I was disappointed in how we competed in the first half, but we played a lot better in the third quarter once we settled down a little bit and we realized that we were playing against human beings and not something we need to be scared of,” McClure said.
McClure made sure his team put the second half to good use.
“We just tried to treat it as a practice there in the second half to be honest, and see who was willing to compete and see who wasn’t and see if we were able to run our stuff against an athletic group of kids, and we were,” he said.
Jackson County continues its region schedule at Friday at 7 p.m. against Monroe Area.