West girls complete sweep of White Oak

The West Brunswick High School girls’ basketball team picked a fine time to end its longest losing streak of the season.

West Brunswick snapped its five-game skid with a 59-53 win against White Oak in a key Mideastern 3A/4A Conference game last Tuesday in Jacksonville.

The Lady Trojans (3-5 conference, 11-8 overall) outscored White Oak 15-9 in the third quarter to take a 43-35 lead and held on to complete a season sweep of the Lady Vikings.

“We played pretty well,” West Brunswick coach Cherry Woodbury said. “By no means did we play a perfect game, but if we made a mistake on offense we hustled back and made up for it on defense.”

Senior guard Miranda Jenrette had 15 points, seven rebounds and seven steals and sophomore guard Sheena Suttlemyre had 15 points and four assists to lead West Brunswick.

Senior forward Jordan Clear contributed 11 points, six rebounds, five steals and three assists and freshman forward Kayla Padgett had eight points in what Woodbury described as the team’s best road game of the season.

White Oak’s Kiara Cruse scored a game-high 19 points. Ashley Thornton chipped in 10 points and Siera Young had eight for the Lady Vikings (2-6 conference, 7-13 overall).

Woodbury said her three captains—Jenrette, Clear and Suttlemyre—stepped up and showed good leadership.

“They played with heart and played to win and weren’t going to let anybody take it away from them,” she said. “We kept our heads and didn’t let one bad thing take us out of it mentally. I was proud of them.”

After scoring in the 30s in five of their previous six games, the Lady Trojans recorded their second-highest point total of the season.

“We pushed the fast break more and got some opportunities in transition that we haven’t been getting a lot lately,” Woodbury said. “We got some steals off the press but we still missed a lot of layups.”

West Brunswick led 28-26 at halftime and pulled away in the third quarter.

“We got into a track meet with them in the third quarter, and we slowed things down in the fourth quarter and sat back in a zone,” Woodbury said. “They kept firing up three-point shots and weren’t very successful.”

The coach said Kristen White (five points) and Mariah Evans (defense) did a good job coming off the bench, and Padgett took advantage of her scoring opportunities.

Suttlemyre shot 9-for-13 from the free-throw line to account for most of her 15 points.

Game Summary

W. Brun. 11 17 15 16—59

W. Oak 12 14 9 18—53

West Brunswick scoring: Jenrette 15, Suttlemyre 15, Clear 11, Padgett 8, White 5, Daniels 2, Shaw 2, Gause 1.

White Oak scoring: Cruse 19, Thornton 10, Young 8, Fifer 4, Hall 3, Smith 2, Henry 2, Scheferkort 2, Hardison 2, Pickett 1.