By Rod Shetler

sports@joplinglobe.com

MARSHFIELD, Mo. — It wasn’t pretty, and at times it was downright sloppy, but Neosho Wildcats girls’ basketball coach Grant Young got what he wanted Thursday night.

He and his team earned a win at tradition-rich Marshfield against the Lady Jays.

Neosho (2-0) turned a 14-14 halftime lead into a 40-33 victory with the help of an amped up offense in the decisive third quarter.

“We’ve still got to get used to playing at this speed,” said Young. “We were beating them down the floor at times, but we were missing layups. We were like that at Joplin the other night. Marshfield’s tradition is based on playing tough defense and they did that tonight, and we didn’t take care of it very well at times, but we’ll be OK.”

The teams combined for 29 first half turnovers (Marshfield 15, Neosho 14) as the teams struggled to find any consistency.

Marshfield lost only one game last year and that was in the district championship game to eventual state champion Bolivar. With Lacey Boshe now playing at Missouri State and Sara Jane Plemmons graduating and moving on to Drury University, it was a different look for the Lady Jays (0-1).

“I thought we competed on defense, but Neosho poses a lot of problems on both ends, but especially in their matchup defense,” said Marshfield coach Gary Murphy. “We not only had trouble making shots, we had trouble finding shots.”

In the third quarter the Wildcats began opening up a lead early when Melanie White drained a 3-pointer just 19 seconds into the second half. Lorelei Snow then hit a short jumper in the paint after a Marshfield turnover and the Wildcats were off and running. They eventually built their scoring run to a 16-3 advantage after another trey from White and a bucket from Chanoah Turney made the score 30-17.

Marshfield trimmed the Neosho lead to 39-33 after a 3-pointer from Alley Bruton with 1:11 to play, but the Wildcats were able to hang on down the stretch.

Snow led the Wildcats with 11 points while Kayln Vlasin finished with 10 points and five rebounds.

“We’ve got about seven girls that can score, and as long as we’re not getting frustrated, and different people keep scoring for us, we’ll be fine,” said Young.