By T. Scott Boatright
Early turnover problems proved costly for Simsboro’s girls Tuesday night as the Lady Tigers opened District 2-B play with a 53-41 loss to Choudrant at the SHS Gym.
Choudrant opened the game with a 9-2 run, with Reese Brown’s three-point play on a layup and free throw giving the Lady Aggies that seven-point advantage with 3:52 remaining in the opening stanza.
The Lady Aggies stretched that lead to 15-5 heading into the second quarter and maintained an eight-point at intermission at 24-16.
Choudrant coach Brandy Roberson said teamwork played a big role in the victory.
“We did a much better job sharing the ball tonight — that’s been happening the past couple of days, but I think it really helped tonight,” Roberson said. “We did a good job (passing), we did a good job defensively. But we didn’t do a good job rebounding. We gave up 39 free throws, the majority coming off of rebounds.”
Choudrant opened the third quarter with a 9-0 run, not allowing the Lady Tigers to score until the Lady Aggies had already chewed four minutes off the clock.
Then the Lady Aggies kicked it up another notch, building a 17-point advantage at 39-22 heading into the final eight minutes of play.
“That first quarter and really the whole game — I think the free throw line was one of our weakness,” said Lady Tigers coach Matt Herring. “”We missed a lot of shots around the goal. When you’re playing another tough team, you can’t miss those shots. We knew this one would go a long way toward the district championship. We turned the ball over and missed layups and free throws. You can’t do that against good teams.
“We’ve been shooting the ball well but have had nights where we shot it poorly. We just picked a bad night to shoot it poorly. We were missing one of our senior guards tonight and that threw us out of whack. It just wasn’t our night. But give Choudrant credit. They played a great game and did what they had to do to win.”
The win snapped a six-game losing skid for the Lady Aggies, who moved to 9-18 overall but 1-0 in District 2-B.
“I knew if we played well we should win ,” Roberson said. “We didn’t play well the whole game, but we had enough moments where we did.
“We set three goals at the beginning of the year. One was to double the number of wins we had last year, one was to win district and the third was to get a playoff game. We’re on track to do that. This is what we had worked for all season — we had to take care of business tonight and keep moving forward. So we feel really good moving deeper into district play now.”
Brown led the Lady Aggies with 16 points while senior guard Brelyn Pyle added 10.
“She played so well tonight on both ends,” Roberson said of Pyle — the lone starting 12th grader on her team. “She’s a player that doesn’t always get a lot of credit. It might not always show up in scoring but she’s all over the stat board — deflections, steals, rebounds. She did it all tonight, and I was so happy to see her get into that groove.
“And to hit some jumpers like she did — that was huge. She can lay the ball up and she can shoot the 3s, but she did everything tonight and was tough to guard.”
De’Shayla Powell led the way with 10 points for the Lady Tigers, who are now 15-8 overall and 0-2 in district play.
“I told the girls in the locker room that tonight we didn’t perform well enough to win,” Herring said. “But, we control our own destiny. If we take care of Forest and take care of Downsville, we get Choudrant again. If we win our last five district games we’ll split with Choudrant and we’ll play it off somewhere. And that’s all we can ask for — to have the chance to take care of ourselves without depending on anyone else. We just have to do better.”
Herring said the lack of consistent games since the first of the year has played its role in recent struggles.
“We were rolling pretty good and things were coming together.” Herring said. “But then we played in late December and then we didn’t play again for a week-and-a-half. Then we played one game and didn’t play for a week. Then we have to start district (play).
“Playing three times over a three-week period knocked us off track. We’re definitely not playing like we were, but hopefully we can get it back soon.”
Simsboro will next play host to Glenbrook on Thursday while Choudrant will play at Downsville on Friday.
