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I never heard anything impressive on his site at all....read more...

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I work at the HSUS, and I’ve also worked at several animal shelters. Shelters do great work – ad...read more...

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DANVILLE – Lincoln County doesn’t get a lot of credit for its defense, but all of that changed Friday night when the Patriots forced host Boyle County into 18 turnovers in the first and fourth quarters and 25 miscues overall and pulled away late for a 58-34 win over the Rebels.

Lincoln (12-4, 3-0 45th District) forced Boyle into 10 first-quarter turnovers that led directly to 18 points and a 23-7 lead after one period.

“Our energy was always there tonight on the defensive end,” Lincoln coach Don Story said. “I don’t know if we always played fundamental defense, but we really picked it up in the first and fourth quarters and that was the difference in the game.”

It wasn’t the start that Boyle coach David Christopher was looking for. The Boyle coach knew No. 6 Lincoln always played sound defense that usually led to easy baskets.

He had the Rebels open the game in a four-corner offense, but quickly had to abandon that strategy when Lincoln scored following a pair of steals and Nikki Bustle nailed a trey to give the Patriots a 7-0 advantage. Lincoln forced Boyle (9-8, 1-3) to play catch-up the rest of the night after connecting on nine of 14 attempts from the field in the first quarter.

“We didn’t handle their pressure very well and what was so disappointing was that many of the turnovers were unforced,” Christopher said. “We knew that we would get a lot of pressure from them going into the game.”

“They are so long and force you to do things you don’t want to do. They don’t get a lot of credit for their defense, but they are solid and they get a lot of easy baskets after steals.”

Senior center Kendra Brown scored 13 points, blocked 11 shots and grabbed nine rebounds to just miss a triple-double despite missing most of the third quarter due to foul trouble. The Patriots also had to play the final three periods without starting guard Jessica Upchurch, who injured her knee in the final seconds of the opening frame.

“She has the potential of having those types of games,” the Lincoln coach said of Brown. “She is amazing when she plays hard and will get after you. What is even more amazing about tonight was that she had to sit out part of the third quarter with foul trouble and still had those kind of numbers.”

Christopher certainly noticed.

“We were not afraid to take it in there at her, but we have to realize when to stop and shoot a short jump shot instead of trying to force it at her,” he said.

Still, as poorly as they played in the first half, the Rebels cut the lead to seven points at 35-28 to end the third period and had a chance to cut into the lead even further, but each time Lincoln was able to get a key defensive stop to end the rally.

“We played better in the second and third quarters and gave ourselves a chance,” Christopher said. “It didn’t hurt us to look over at their bench and see Upchurch and Brown on the bench, though. Bustle hit a big 3 to begin the fourth quarter and things just seemed to snowball on us after that.”

Bustle scored nine points and Korey Coleman added six during a 21-2 scoring run to begin the final frame that gave the Patriots their largest lead of the night at 56-30.

“Nikki’s 3-point basket to begin the quarter was huge,” Story said. “She had to handle a whole lot more of the game when Jess went out. She was outstanding.”

With Upchurch on the bench hurt and Brown in foul trouble, Story received valuable minutes from his bench. The game marked the return of Alissa Patterson, who was seeing her first action of the year, while Coleman scored eight points and grabbed seven rebounds in limited action.

“Alissa was obviously rusty and will get better as the season goes along,” he said. “Korey came in and gave us some minutes and played outstanding.”

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