Bad nights at the free-throw line happen—it’s just particularly unfortunate when just about everyone on the roster has a bad night at the same time.
Fluvanna County’s 6-for-23 night at the charity stripe sunk the Flucos in a 49-45 loss to Page at William Monroe in the Dragon Holiday Ball.
“What it comes down to is that when we’re out here in game situations we’ve got to hit them,” said Fluvanna coach Chad White. “We can go into practice and knock down 80 percent of them but that 80 percent means nothing if we can’t knock them out in the game.”
It didn’t help that Page was on fire from downtown. The Panthers, out of the Group A, Region B Shenandoah District, buried five 3-pointers in the second half, several of them tough shots.
“Our perimeter defense is pretty good — teams rarely shoot a good percentage from the 3-point line,” White said. “They knocked down a couple where we were in their face.”
Junior Taylor Jenkins finished with 15 points to lead Page while Holli Lucas, a sophomore, knocked home 12 points and Kaitlin Comer, another junior, tallied nine.
Those scoring efforts forced Fluvanna to try and make up for its shortcomings at the line with a typical one-two punch K-anna and Mia Loyd, who finished with 15 and nine points respectively. But that wasn’t enough in the end as Page knocked home their own free throws and hit big buckets when they counted to hand Fluvanna (5-1) its first loss of the season.
Lauren Key knocked down a solid three for Fluvanna during the second half and had a strong, scrappy first half on both ends of the floor. Terra Foster also came up with a couple of fastbreak baskets in the opening half.
The Flucos take on James Wood now today at 2 p.m.
