Andover Central girls overcome injuries in win over Maize South

This isn’t the complete Andover Central girls basketball team. At least that’s what coach Stana Jefferson tells herself whenever she becomes frustrated.

For the first three games, it was senior Morgan Cessop missing with an injury. On Tuesday night at Maize South, Cessop returned but senior starter Beth Schulte (knee) sat out due to injury.

It’s been a disjointed start to the season for the Jaguars, but they are now 3-1 after a 57-44 victory over Maize South to hand the Mavericks (2-1) their first loss of the season.

“We’re going to get better playing as a team ... slowly,” Jefferson said. “We keep waiting on that full group to come together, but it seems like every game we have different kids in different spots. It was definitely a little herky jerky (Tuesday), but there are some bright spots.”

One was the play of junior Ashtyn Brown, who scored a season-high 12 points after scoring 13 in the first three games combined, in place of Schulte.

“Ashtyn is a strong body and she’s still not even close to reaching her potential of always going hard,” Jefferson said. “I told her if she quit taking vacations out there, she could have 26 and 15 rebounds.”

Maize South led 16-13 after the first quarter, but didn’t have an answer for Andover Central in transition after that. Central point guard Jewell Bolden routinely pushed the pace and helped her team find easy baskets.

Ryann Stearns scored a game-high 20 points, while Cessop added eight points in her return. Stearns is averaging 18.5 points in Andover Central’s 3-1 start.

“We knew we had to push the ball because they were getting tired,” Stearns said. “We knew if we pushed te pace, then we could get easy baskets.”

Maize South was out-scored 34-15 in the second and third quarters combined, a 16-minute stretch that coach Sabrina Gallo was extremely disappointed in.

“We just didn’t have any energy and we weren’t running any offense,” Gallo said. “We just kind of stood around and I was really frustrated with the girls. They definitely beat themselves tonight.”

Jefferson hopes to know the extent of Schulte’s injury, suffered in last Friday’s loss against Goddard, by Friday’s game against Arkansas City. She’s still looking forward to that first game with a whole roster.

“We haven’t all got on the same page yet,” Jefferson said. “Every time I think we’re about to be on the same page, then someone else gets hurt or gets in foul trouble. We’re hoping it begins to click here soon.”

This story was originally published December 13, 2016 at 8:25 PM with the headline "Andover Central girls overcome injuries in win over Maize South."