The Lady Tigers and Tigers played host to Upperman Friday night, and it was the Bees who took home the wins as the Tigers battled some tough competitors.
Upperman Lady Bees 85
DeKalb Lady Tigers 39
“They’re really good, Upperman’s number one in the state,” said DCHS Head Basketball Coach Danny Fish. “They shot the ball really well and we needed them to shoot worse to get some momentum there but they started out really good and that was kind of all she wrote. They kept playing and competing and that’s what we wanted them to do. There’s going to be times when life hits you in the face but we’ve got to step up to the play and still go at it and not step down from a challenge. They didn’t step down from it and I’m proud of them.”
The Lady Tigers fell behind early in the first quarter, giving the Lady Bees 20 of their 24 total free throws in the first half with Upperman making 12 points from the line.
This led to a deep deficit going into the break as Upperman held a 53-24 halftime lead that DeKalb couldn’t recover from.
DeKalb’s Emme Colwell led the offense with 14 points followed by Lydia Brown with 11.
Rounding out the scoring for the Lady Tigers were Mya Ruch, Kenzie France and Megan Walker, all with 4 points each, and Mallori Hart scored 2 points in the contest.
Akira Levy led the Lady Bees scoring with 20 points.
Upperman Bees 56
DeKalb County Tigers 52
DeKalb County lost a close heartbreaker to Upperman in the fourth quarter as the Bees eked out just 5 more points of offense in the final eight after the Tigers held a 37-36 lead after three.
“Our kids played hard,” said DCHS Head Coach Linus Martin. “We are a zone mainly basketball team but we did something different tonight; we manned up and challenged the kids to see if we could guard them. We challenged them with that and they lived up to it and they’re a hard team to defend with all the screens and the movement and all the kids that can shoot it; they hit from everywhere … I’m not going to fault these kids - they played hard tonight.”
Marshall Evins and Trey Jones both tied with 11 points each for DeKalb’s total tally, Alan Munoz and Tanner Poss had 9 points each, Nathan Atkins 7, Colter Norris 3 and Dallas Cook scored 2 points.
Upperman’s Donovan McCallister had the game-high total with 19 points in the game.
