SALEM-The Salem girls basketball team jumped out to a quick lead but wound up losing to Minerva, 40-30, on Wednesday.

Salem is now 5-5 overall and 2-5 record in the Northeastern Buckeye Conference. Minerva improves to 8-2 and 5-2 in the NBC.

Chloe Cheresne started the scoring for the Quakers with a wide open three-pointer within the first 20 seconds of the game. Despite the loss, she ended the night with 21 points and 11 rebounds.

“We started out running our offenses and we were setting things up. Things were going our way. Minerva eventually started playing press and then things got hectic. We needed to play press and we couldn’t. We needed to get up in their face and it wasn’t working.” Cheresne said.

Salem appeared to be rather dominant despite only leading by two points at the end of the first quarter. In the second, the Quakers started showing some deficiencies after Minerva’s Josie Chaddock stopped a 6-0 scoring run and responded with a mini 5-0 run to finish out the quarter.

Chaddock would end the night with 14 points and six steals for the Lions.

In the second half, the bleeding continued as Salem let up a 10-0 scoring run in the third quarter, which was eventually broken by a Cheresne layup in which she was assisted by Leah Menegos, who finished the night with four points and 10 rebounds.

As hard as they tried throughout the second half, the Quakers could not stop the Lions and were outscored 27-16. Salem coach Roger Zeigler preached execution after the game.

“The girls always give effort. I think they’ve lost (this season) by 10, by 10, by five and by five,” he said. “We are in every game. We have to execute. We executed well in the first half, but in the second half, I don’t know if we executed any of our plays more than three times. We have to keep composure. We have to break the press and execute, but we apparently haven’t learned that yet.”

Minerva coach Heather Frigyes praised the second half play.

“We knew tonight that we’d be going up against a very good defensive team,” she said. “For example, the first time they went against Carrolton, they kept the score 35-25. We knew it’d be a defensive battle and we hoped to get it up the floor a bit and be able to pressure them. We wanted to play a fast-paced game, something that they might not be comfortable with. It started rough. In the second half, we did a much better job rebounding on the offensive and defensive end. Those things helped us win tonight.”.

Minerva’s jayvee beat Salem’s jayvee 31-9. Minerva’s leading scorer was Nelle Yancovich with nine points. Salem’s was Jessica Slocum with four points.

Salem next plays on Wednesday at Austintown Fitch. Minerva hosts Malvern on Saturday.

MINERVA: 6-7-16-11-40

SALEM: 8-8-6-8-30

MINERVA TEAM SCORING: Amanda Burchett 1-0-2, Madison Pearson 4-1-9, Logan Pottorf 5-0-10, Nora Yanovich 0-0-0, Josie Chaddock 5-4-14, Kayla Kinsey 0-0-0, Alivia Bates 0-2-2, Bri Gassman 1-1-3, Lauren Frigyes 0-0-0. TEAM TOTALS: 16, 8-13:40.

SALEM TEAM SCORING: Rylee Leider 1-1-3, Allee Davidson 1-0-2, Chloe Cheresne 9-2-21, Olivia Stiff 0-0-0, Leah Menegos 2-0-4, Elle Davidson 0-0-0, Katie Moore 0-0-0, Helene Shontz 0-0-0. TEAM TOTALS: 13, 3-5:30.

Three-point goals: Minerva 0, Salem 1 (Cheresne).