Lexington girls dominate 4th to win over Chester County

LEXINGTON — To call the fourth quarter anything but a dominating performance by the Lexington girls basketball team would be incorrect.

The Lady Tigers put together some of their best offensive possession followed by defensive stops together to outscore Chester County 21-2 to come away with a 54-38 victory over the Eaglettes at home on Friday.

"We have struggled the past couple of games," Lexington coach Bianca Thomas said. "We came out here trying to stop Paige Pipkin defensively, and I thought we did a good job of that. She hit a couple shots, and then we made adjustments."

This put Chester County (8-11) and Lexington (11-9) into a tie for third place in the district standings at 2-2.

Kyla Taylor led the Lady Tigers with 25 points with 11 coming in the fourth quarter, while Leslie Powers added 14 points.

"I thought we brought a lot of energy in the fourth quarter," Taylor said. "We were not going to give up on our homecoming. We had to take care of the ball better than we did in the first three quarters."

Chester County for the first three quarters, but the momentum completely changed in the fourth as Lexington scored the first six points of the quarter.

The Lady Tigers got the ball out in transition for easy layups off of defensive rebounds.

"We have talked about spreading the floor on offense and defense," Thomas said. "They tried to trap up, and we worked to pass over it and get easy layups."

Lexington held the Eaglettes to multiple one-shot possessions in the quarter, which allowed them to get the ball out quickly.

After Lexington took its first lead on a three-point play by Powers, Paige Pipkin answered right back for Chester County.

Taylor scored again to put the Lady Tigers up three on a layup.

On Chester County's next possession, a referee's whistle was blown, the players stopped, but the referees allowed the ball to roll out of bounds and awarded to Lexington.

The Lady Tigers finished the game with 13 straight points.

Many of those final points were scored by spreading the floor, moving the ball and finding Taylor wide open for a layup.

Tuesday night, Lexington had an opportunity to pick up another district win, but the Lady Tigers allowed a 10-point lead to slip away in the final minutes.

"We were close to winning on the road, but it showed that we had to play hard every possession," Thomas said. "We battled every possession, and I think that Kyla was phenomenal in the post."

For Taylor, beating Chester County was a the right way to bounce back.

"After that tough loss, we had to put it behind us, and we had to get this win," Taylor said.

Three players did all of the scoring for Chester County as Pipkin and Amya Boyle scored 14 points each, while Savanna Naylor added 10.

Boys

Lexington 79,

Chester County 58

The Tigers (11-11, 4-0) had four players score in double figures to pick up a win and stay in first place in the District 14-AA standings.

Trevon Bryant and Khamen Garrett scored 16 points each, while Jake Runyon and Aerion Butler scored 15 points each.

Chester County (6-11, 1-3) was led by Brennan Phelps with 14 points, and Jake McCaskill added 10.

Reach Michael Odom at michodom@jacksonsun.com or on Twitter @JSWriterMichael.