Anderson County’s Amiya Jenkins has plenty of help in Bearcats’ pursuit of region crown
It was not as if Anderson County kept its bona fide Miss Basketball candidate Amiya Jenkins under glass for a half during its top-10 battle with border rival Franklin County on Wednesday.
Jenkins, a 5-foot-11 senior guard who has signed with Kentucky, played nearly every minute of the first two quarters for the No. 5 Bearcats. Her offense just wasn’t needed, yet. Her teammates and her defensive play helped Anderson County keep pace with the No. 7 Flyers until it was time for her part of the playbook to open up.
Jenkins scored all 11 of her points in the second half and got a key steal and foul shots with her team up by three in the final minute to preserve a 52-46 win at home against the back-to-back 11th Region champions, a team Anderson County has faced and beaten in each of the last two Sweet 16s.
“We knew they were going to especially key in on (Jenkins) early, and we tried to have some flow and tried to work (Jacie) Chesser on the inside and see if we could get them in a little foul trouble,” said Anderson County Coach Clay Birdwhistell, who has four straight wins against Franklin County. “That also caused them to collapse (their defense inside). That’s what got Lainey (Johnson) a lot of her shots, especially in the second quarter.”
Johnson, a 5-11 freshman, has shown flashes of her potential this season and had a breakout performance Wednesday. She scored a game-high 17 points and made five of her six three point attempts, including two in the fourth quarter. The last came off a Jenkins drive and dish that put Anderson County up 44-41 with 3:07 left in the game.
“I feel like she’s going to be one of the best to ever play here, honestly,” said senior center Jacie Chesser, who scored 15 points. “You can drive in her neighborhood and she’s outside running and shooting shots (every) day. She’s one of the hardest workers on our team.”
This season, Chesser and Jenkins returned to a team that lost three starters to graduation. All three are playing college ball at some level. Fellow senior Paige Serafini averages 10.6 points per game now as a starter, but the emergence of Johnson and the other underclassmen is part of the rebuilding, as is having players besides Jenkins, like sophomore Jenna Satterly, run the offense.
“She (Jenkins) is OK being the best defender in the state, even if she’s not getting isolations and all that every play on offense,” Birdwhistell said. “I thought it gave us an opportunity to get everybody involved, and I thought it made us much harder to guard in the second half.
“Because, now, you’re afraid to leave Lainey Johnson. Now, you’re afraid to leave all these others. And it enabled (Jenkins) the space that she requires to attack. She’s an incredible teammate because at no point do you see her pouting if her numbers are down. It’s special, and I hope people realize what a special teammate she is.”
Johnson didn’t see much playing time as an eighth-grader.
“This year she has a little bit more on her shoulders — she has to rebound, she has to be aggressive,” Birdwhistell said. “When we played Cooper, the kid had nine rebounds against that huge, huge team, and she just got in there. And then tonight, she’s making it rain from outside. … We’re excited about her.”
Toughness and rebounding appear to be the primary concerns for Anderson (13-2), whose two losses have come against aggressive, physical teams — No. 3 Clark County last month and a very good Central team on Monday. They got a little better in that regard against Franklin County (11-3).
“We have to gang rebound,” Birdwhistell said. “To hold a team (Franklin) that size to one offensive rebound is a really big deal for us, considering two days ago (against Central) we gave up 23 offensive rebounds. … I read somewhere that that’s not good.
“But it’s not fixed. It’s something that we’re going to keep working on every day. Hopefully by the end of the year, we’re going to be on the short list of teams that can contend for this thing.”
Those fixes will have to come against a schedule that doesn’t get any easier. Over the next two weeks, Russell, last year’s 16th Region champ, and Ryle, a 9th Region powerhouse, come to town. That will be followed by participation in the Louisville Invitational Tournament at the end of the month, featuring a field arguably even tougher than the Sweet 16.
“We try to line up the best teams we can find,” Birdwhistell said. “What we don’t want to do is try to schedule 30 wins so that we get in the postseason and get exposed. We need to know that now.”
Chesser likes the progress she’s seen thus far.
“I feel like we’re doing a lot of the stuff we need to do now. We’re working hard. We’re giving it our all,” she said. “That’s all we really can do. We’re preparing the best we can with the hardest competition games, but other than that, we’re going to have to wait and see if we get there. And if we get there, we’ll do what needs to be done.”
