It was mission accomplished Wednesday inside the John Marshall Fieldhouse, as the Monarchs forced 24 turnovers and held the visiting Patriots to 33 points in a 59-33 victory.

John Marshall, now 2-1 on the season, was coming off a tough 74-40 road loss to Greenbrier East.

“It was a big bounce back from Greenbrier,” Melko said. “You know, we were coming off a big game last week, and having a big game coming up Friday, it was good to get a win here. Our, big focus was winning with our defense. And I thought since, really until about the middle of the fourth quarter, we did a pretty good job of that. I don’t think our offense was very smooth all night, but we were able to extend the lead because they weren’t scoring.

“I really credit our defense ’cause they have some shooters and some athletes that we were really focused in on. I thought our defense allowed us to overcome some stupid turnovers and bad shots.”

John Marshall led wire-to-wire Wednesday, and received 22 points from Kaylee White, and a 16-point, 10-rebound double-double from Rilee Storm. They led 18-5 after the first quarter, and 32-15 at halftime. An 11-0 Monarchs scoring run made up much of the third quarter, and the Monarchs had a 49-20 advantage going into the fourth.

“I think this was just a difference of two teams with different experience,” Wheeling Park head coach Ryan Young said. “John Marshall has a very good basketball team. A lot of credit goes to them, but just their experience– having so many seniors and not just seniors, kids that have played three, some four years of varsity basketball. And that was pretty evident tonight. We’re, a very young team.

“I’m not gonna repeat that all year, but I think it was pretty obvious in a game where you have a team of John Marshall’s caliber match with their experience versus a young team like us. That’s probably the biggest difference. We had way too many turnovers, didn’t shoot the ball well, and they out-rebounded us. That’s a bad recipe for success when you get beat in all those areas.”

It had been nine years since John Marshall had defeated Wheeling Park– exactly 3,619 days, with January 13, 2016 the last time the Monarchs had defeated the Patriots. Melko said that he had 3,619 written down in their locker room.

“I think John Marshall, being a team that we’ve had kind of a lot of success against in the past decade, you know, they were ready for this and they went out and played and earned it,” Young said. “You know, congratulations to Brock. He’s done a good job here and you know, we get to play them again. So we’ll get to see where we’re at at that point, use it as a measuring stick for our season as we grow up as a team.”

Wheeling Park is 0-2 on the year. Karringtyn Miller led Wheeling Park with eight, while Adriana Moses and Leah Young each scored seven.

Both teams will play on Friday, Wheeling Park against Union Local as part of the Sam Andy Classic inside WesBanco Arena, and John Marshall at home against East Fairmont.

“We like where we are, but we know we have to get a million times better,” Melko said of the team. “We went down to Greenbrier last week and they’re very good. They’re probably about to be number one in the state and we kind of had a slow start, but then felt like we kinda let ’em off the hook at the end. So it was good to see us compete, but we’ve had Friday circled on our schedule for a while. We have East Fairmont coming here and they’re very, very good. We respect the heck out of them and we know for regional seedings, for us to get where we want to be in Charleston, Friday’s game is massive.”

“Like I said, we’ve had that one circled for a while and we’re really excited to get out here and see what we can do against them.”

John Marshall outrebounded Wheeling Park 28-17. Paislee Babiczuk grabbed nine rebounds for the Monarchs.