BUCYRUS — Buckeye Central made a state Final Four appearance last year. Even with the loss of All-Ohio player Jenna Karl to graduation, the goals are the same for the Buckettes.

The Bucyrus Lady Redmen will not doubt the validity of those goals.

Buckeye Central forced 24 Bucyrus turnovers and used its size advantage at almost every position on the floor to defeat the Redmen, 68-28, in a Northern 10 Athletic Conference game at Alex Kish Memorial Gymnasium Saturday afternoon.

“We’re last in the league in turnovers forced at like 13 a game,” first-year Buckeye Central coach Abram Kaple said. “We’ve got to figure out a way to turn people over to generate easy baskets. We just haven’t done that.”

Kaple can use this game as a blueprint. The Buckettes caused 10 first-quarter miscues by the Redmen to grab a 12-6 lead after one, despite hitting just four of 15 shot attempts.

“We just need to be able to handle it in the half-court,” Bucyrus coach Taylor Tackett said. “It’s not really the press or the other team forcing (turnovers). It’s us turning the ball over ourselves.”

Freshman Claudia Pifher led the charge for Buckeye Central (8-2, 6-1 N10), scoring 14 of her game-high 19 points in the first half. A 20-6 second-quarter advantage ballooned the Buckettes’ lead to 32-12 by intermission.

“Their two really good players — the Floyd girl and the Lewis girl (Ni’Georia and Alivia) — that’s what we wanted to take away,” Kaple said. “I thought we did of pretty good job of keeping them five points under their average. That’s a team goal. We feel if we do that, we’re going to be in a good spot to win the game.”

Lewis scored 12 points to lead Bucyrus (2-7, 0-6), which is right at her average, but Floyd finished with just seven, about half of her average. But once the Buckettes got the offense rolling, it didn’t really matter.

The Redmen did not shoot the ball well, hitting only 11 of 53 attempts, only five fewer shots than Buckeye Central attempted. But the coach was not unhappy with shot selection.

“I thought we did a much better job of driving to the basket instead of settling for the outside shot,” Tackett said. “That was new for us. Maybe that’s why our shooting percentage was down a little bit, because we’re taking different kinds of shots.”

Despite the margin of victory, Kaple sees things his team needs to work on.

“We gave up way too many offensive rebounds,” Kaple said. “Some of those second and third shot attempts, that’s on us because we don’t have the urgency. Sometimes we get good box-outs, then we don’t go track it down. Until we learn to do that, other teams are going to get a ton of shots. That’s a big flaw of ours right now.”

Indeed, Bucyrus had 32 rebounds and 16 came on the offensive end. Floyd led the Redmen with seven total boards and four of hers were of the offensive variety.

Three Buckettes reached double figures in scoring. Courtney Pifher had 18 points in support of sister Claudia’s 19. Elizabeth Heydinger came off the bench to add 10. Courtney Pifher grabbed 15 rebounds.

“I thought we played much harder than we have recently, offensively and defensively,” Tackett said. “We played more as a team than we did individually.

“(Buckeye Central) has the size on us and they can go in and out real easily,” she added.

“We didn’t really shoot it well from distance,” Kaple said. “Five of 16 (from 3-point range) is a little below where we’re normally at. But for the most part, I thought we played a well-rounded game.”

Buckeye Central also won the junior varsity game, 40-22. Zoie Lewis had nine points to lead the Buckettes and Lauren Mann added eight.

Karmyn Blizzard dropped in eight for Bucyrus and Hayli Stoffer added six.

Box score

Buckeye Central     12      20     16    20 — 68

Bucyrus                      6        6      10      6 — 28

Buckeye Central (8-2, 6-1 N10): Shots 25-58; 3-pt. shots 5-16; Free throws 13-14; Rebounds 40 (Courtney Pifher 15); Turnovers 15. Scoring: Courtney Pifher 7 2 18, Taylor Ratliff 3 0 6, Claudia Pifher 4 8 19, Lexi Evak 1 0 2, Kyleigh Brown 4 1 9, Elizabeth Heydinger 5 0 10, Ally Green 1 2 4.

Bucyrus (2-7, 0-6 N10): Shots 11-53; 3-pt. shots 2-9 (Ni’Georia Floyd, Caleigh Rister); Free throws 4-4; Rebounds 32 (Ni’Georia Floyd 7); Turnovers 24. Scoring: Ni’Georia Floyd 3 0 7, Caleigh Rister 3 0 7, Alivia Lewis 4 4 12, Taylor Patterson 1 0 2.

JV: Buckeye Central 40-22.