The Ashe County High School varsity girls basketball team continues to roll through their conference schedule, completing sweeps of the Forbush Falcons and the Starmount Rams with 30 and 20-point wins, respectively.

With the wins the Huskies pushed their record conference win streak to 24. They lost their last game in the Mountain Valley Conference to Starmount by one point (69-68) on Dec. 19, 2008.

Huskies Soar Over Falcons

Head Coach Laura Foster said she didn't know what happened to her team during the first six minutes of their home match against Forbush on Tuesday, Jan. 19. Over that span the team missed more than a dozen shots and fell into an early 8-0 deficit.

The next 30 minutes were completely different, however, as Forbush could barely score and couldn't much prevent the Huskies from scoring. Ashe County scored four quick points at the end of the first quarter and took the lead 90 seconds into the second. Forbush tied the game at 10 with 5:49 remaining in the half, but it was the closest they would ever come as Ashe ended the half on a 15-3 run.

The Huskies' continued to dominate Forbush in the second half, pushing their lead to 20 midway through the third quarter. They led 39-23 entering the final quarter but outscored the Falcons 16-2 over the final eight minutes for the 55-25 victory and their 10th conference victory.

"Forbush started out real strong, sort of came out of the gates very tough," said Foster. "Our kids just sort of watched them play for a little while, but I got their attention real quick."

Foster got their attention sending in five substitutes to replace the starters. She said "those five got us back into it and we got back to playing like we can."

 She later said she thought the team "did a real good job in the second half defensively just exerting our will onto them."

Strong Defense Sends Huskies Past Rams

Ashe County opened their home match against Starmount on Friday, Jan. 22, with an 8-2 run over the first four minutes. Four different players scored as Ashe hit three baskets and went two-of-four from the free throw line, but the Huskies struggled on the offensive side of the ball for the rest of the game.

Their offensive woes led to only 46 points for Ashe County (one more than their season low of 45 at Wilkes Central), but the Huskies were able to rally behind a strong defensive effort that allowed less than seven points per quarter.

Starmount pulled within three points midway through the first quarter but trailed 13-5 entering the second. Ashe went on a 6-2 run over the first four minutes of the second and led 24-10 after junior point guard Mariah McVey scored five points in the span of 50 seconds. The Huskies led 25-12 at the half.

The Ashe defense continued to exert their will over Starmount in the second half, holding the Rams to seven points in both the third and fourth quarters to seal the 46-26 victory.

Foster said the key to her team's victory was "obviously the defensive rebounding because we had all kinds of difficulty putting the ball in the basket. I told them this is a good example of a game when, if you're not shooting good, you can always bring your defense in and rebound, and that carried us through. Luckily, we played good enough to hold them to 26 points. We did a good job on their point guard and I thought our overall team defense was good." She later added that they "had shots with good looks that just didn't fall - you're going to have games like that. We executed, we just couldn't score."

Foster noted that the team will focus on free throws after going 9-for-18 from the line against Starmount, which Foster said was "probably the worst we've shot free throws all year."

Ashe County continued conference play with a home match against East Wilkes on Wednesday, Jan. 26 (delayed from Tuesday night due to snow). They will follow that game with two conference road trips: to Alleghany on Friday, Jan. 29, and to Elkin on Tuesday, Feb. 2. They beat both teams by huge margins (61-28 against Alleghany, 56-18 against Elkin) in West Jefferson.

Admission to all home games is $5 and the varsity girls usually tip off at approximately 6:30 p.m. Anyone unable to attend any of the games can tune into the action on WKSK 580 AM.