Senior Jessica Recker goes over the top of New Knoxville’s Paige Lehman to score two of her game-high 23 Thursday night at Arnzen Gymnasium. Despite this, the visiting Rangers grabbed a 7-point MAC win.

Unfortunately, they had dug themselves too big a hole to overcome the Lady Rangers’ 19-7 bulge in the third period en route to a 48-41 victory.

The senior-less and extremely young Rangers (3 juniors, 4 sophomores, 4 freshmen) led 17-14 at the half but clicked on both ends of the floor in the third canto. They shot 8-of-12 from the field (19-of-34 for the game, 2-of-7 from deep, for 55.9%) running their half-court set well, getting a number of layins. Junior Page Lehman (10 points, 5 boards) got hot, shaking loose from the Lady Jay (6-7, 1-4 MAC) man-to-man defense for eight points in leading the way. As well, Knoxville (10-3, 4-1 MAC) used its solid man defense (with a bit of 2-3 zone mixed in) to hold the Blue and Gold to 3-of-8 shooting (14-of-40 overall, 5-of-20 long range, for 35%). When sophomore Meg Reineke (16 counters) laid in a bucket with 40 ticks left, the visitors led 36-21.

“We lost the intensity we had defensively from the first half. New Knoxville stepped their game up and we didn’t,” Jays mentor Dan J. Grothouse explained. “I thought we did a good job on Lehman and (Haley) Horstman overall — holding them to 10 points each was a good effort — but we let Lehman get away from us. Offensively, we struggled with our confidence with the ball. We weren’t getting any offensive rebounds and they were just more aggressive.”