Despite a great comeback, the DeKalb County Lady Tigers dropped their district opener 49-42 to the York Institute Lady Dragons Friday night in Smithville.
A four-point first period put DeKalb behind 16-4. The Lady Tigers would commit two turnovers and miss three shots from the field before DeKalb could put points on the board. At the 4:25 mark of the first period, the Lady Tigers' Paige Winningham made the score 9-2.
The second period saw the Lady Tiger offense get into gear as they scored 12 points, behind a six-point effort from senior Chelsea Lewis.
DeKalb's defense shut down York standout Ashley Wright, who had scored nine first-period points, holding her scoreless during the second period.
However, the Lady Dragons found other contributors as six players found the net during the period to extend York's lead to 33-16 at halftime.
After some nice adjustments by Head Coach Joe Pat Cope, the Lady Tigers mounted a comeback that saw the Lady Dragons’ lead shrink to nine points with the score 37-28 at the end of the third period.
Loren Cripps hit three of her game-high six three-pointers in the final period to help lead DeKalb comeback bid.
With just 40 seconds remaining in the game, Chelsea Lewis made a nice move then drove to the hoop to make the score 44-42. That was as close as the Lady Tigers would get as the Lady Dragons went on to win 49-42.
Loren Cripps led all scorers with 18 points. Chelsea Lewis dropped in nine with Paige Winningham adding seven points. Senior Abbey Caldwell and Freshman Ashli Chew each contributed two points.
After the game, the Review sat with Head Coach Joe Pat Cope.
The Smithville Review: Your team got out to a slow start, but then came back. What did you say to them at halftime?
Cope: The first half, it was bad when you looked at the scoreboard. We shot six of 31 during the first half, four of 18 in the paint and we still were getting some good looks, just nothing fell for us. When we went in at halftime, I told the girls that we need to keep our defense up. We changed one thing on our half-court trap and moved two girls on it. We told them that if we could get some shots down and be patient with our offense we could be back in the game.
The young ladies played their hearts out in the second half and got it down to two points. There was a close call on the sideline. The referee came in and made the call from 60-feet out with under one minute to go. But our start killed us. You have to make open shots and we didn't do that. Coming into the game, we really studied Ashley Wright and I thought our girls did a great job double-teaming her at all times, keeping the ball out of her hands. We held her to 13 points. I watched film on her last weekend, she scored 24 points against Pickett County. She is a first-team All District 8-AA member and our players did a great job on her. We just need to make more shots.
We need to find a way to win these types of games. There are no more moral victories. These girls will go home tonight like me and not be able to sleep much because this is a game we have got to win to get to the next level.
Have we improved? Yes. Are we where we need to be? No, we just need to win games like this one.
Smithville Review: Talk about your upcoming opponent Tuesday and Smith County Friday night.
Cope: In 8-AA, there are no off nights. You have to bring it each game or you can get embarrassed. If we play the second half like we played the first, we could have been beat by 40 points, but our team came back and fought hard. We just need to finish these types of games to be the team we want to be.