LINDEN &8212; The biggest threat Linden High School&8217;s girl&8217;s basketball team boasts is dominance in the paint brought about by physical play by players down low.

The dominance wasn&8217;t enough last week, when they fell in a 59-56 nail bitter to one of the best girl&8217;s groups in the area &8212; Marengo High School. This week it was a different story for the Lady Patriots, who established themselves as a major player in the area with their 64-32 win over John Essex High School.

In all actuality, John Essex played their game for most of the night &8212; a game where players moved to the ball quickly, tried to disrupt opponents&8217; offenses and cause turnovers while throwing up a shot when an open look came available.

The problem for the Lady Hornets was that they were undersized and lacked the technique and finesse, like that held by Marengo&8217;s group, needed to overcome Linden&8217;s juggernaut power game. The Patriots dominated the board, pulling down almost every rebound and fed the ball inside to their bigger players who easily tossed it in over the head of the Hornets.

Linden started the game off strong and carried that momentum through the duration of the game. In each of the first three periods, the Patriots more than doubled the score of the Hornets, while putting up their lowest scoring period in the fourth to the Hornets&8217; nine that tied their high scoring period.

Despite the effort, McKinney said there are still mental errors the group needs to fix to succeed down the stretch:

Leading scorers for the Patriots were Meagan Hinton with 24, Jasmine Rembert with 20 and Kristi Lloyd with 15. Jas Edwards lead the scoring for the Hornets with 12.