SECOND HALF SURGE

Trenton Girls Use Strong Second Half To Rout Princeton

Through one half of basketball, the Trenton High School girls basketball team didn’t appear to be in jeopardy of losing its Grand River Conference opener with Princeton Tuesday night. But, the first half didn’t showcase the Bulldogs as the feared monster they have become since joining this league ahead of last season either.
That all changed in the second half.
Trenton crushed any hopes Princeton may have had of pulling a large upset, using a 32-9 second-half run to cruise to a 56-23 victory – one that moves Trenton to 7-0 overall and 1-0 in the GRC.
“We went out there and we weren’t really in it yet, we weren’t really focused,” Trenton guard Ainsley Tolson said. “During halftime we talked to our coach (Brian Upton) and he was telling us we were having a lot of turnovers and some dumb mistakes. So, we just tried to clean it up a little bit and it ended up working out for us.”
Despite the sloppy play, Trenton still held a 24-14 lead at the break, a score that could have been much worse had it not been for a 9-2 run by Princeton to close the second quarter. The Tigers would get the first bucket of the second half, drawing to within eight points, but Trenton pummeled Princeton from that point on.
“We weren’t our best,” Upton said. “It seemed like in the first half, we were just taking the game as it comes instead of making the game what we wanted it to be. We had a pretty honest conversation about making better decisions with the basketball in our hands and on defensive rotations. We just challenged them to be a little bit smarter in the second half.”
Tolson did the bulk of the damage, too. After scoring seven points in the first half, Trenton’s all-state guard went off in the second, scoring 20 more points to push her total to a game-high 27. Sidney Lynch followed with 10 points. six rebounds and three steals and Maci Moore had eight points and nine rebounds. Trenton also got seven points, five assists and eight steals from Mykah Hurley and four points from Lexi Whitaker.
“We get a lot of points in transition,” Tolson said. “It helps a lot to have Mykah, she is really good on defense. She gets a lot of steals for us and she had a lot of really good assists tonight. A lot of my points came from her, so it’s awesome to have her on our team.”
As a team, Trenton had 18 steals and 13 defensive rebounds, limiting what the Tigers could do offensively. Jaelyn Thomas led Princeton with 11 points and was the only player to reach more than six points for the visitors.
UP NEXT
Trenton: The Bulldogs are back in Grand River Conference action on Friday, traveling to Bethany to take on South Harrison. Tip time is scheduled for 6 p.m.
“We are going to get everyone’s best shot because we are the defending champions,” Upton said. “It is important to us, though because a conference championship is a season-long accomplishment. The girls are excited about it and we want to make a statement in our conference games. We think we have a pretty good team, but we don’t want there to be any doubt.”
Princeton: The Tigers host Gallatin in GRC action Friday night in Princeton.