RUSTON, La. — Between a stingy defense and a stellar performance by sophomore Heaven Weeks, the Wossman Wildcats (8-8) beat the Ruston High Lady Bearcats (9-3) Wednesday night 68-35 in Ruston’s first home loss of the season.
“We were out of sync and had a lot of turnovers tonight,” Ruston High Head Coach LaShanda Cooper said. “Wossman came in and was scoring the ball consistently off of a lot of mental mistakes that we made — especially while in the press. We knew they were going to bring their best game, but at the same time, I felt like we were going to step up and compete, but we got out of sync and things didn’t go our way.
”We missed a lot of wide open shots. It was kind of like everything that could have possibly gone wrong went wrong. But it’s part of the growing pains. We have to get back in the gym and get back to work.”
Lady Bearcat senior guard Journi Douglas buried an early three-pointer to put Ruston up 3-0 early with 7:42 to go in the quarter. The Wildcats, however, scored 14 straight points after that over the next five minutes before junior Kearra Wilson made one of two free throws with 2:22 to cut Wossman’s lead to 14-4. Sophomore Adrianna Robinson hit one more free throw for the Bearcats toward the end of the quarter, and Ruston trailed 18-5 going into the second.
Junior Angelica Green opened the second quarter with a three for the Lady Bearcats toward cut Wossman’s lead to 18-8 near the seven-minute mark. Ruston would close the gap as close to 22-15 after baskets from Douglas, Wilson and Junior Bailee Harrison with 3:34 left to go in the half. Wossman, however, ended the second quarter on a 10-3 run to lead 32-18 at halftime.
Wossman’s stingy defense forced over a dozen first half turnovers on the Bearcats. Weeks scored 10 of her game-high 27 points in the first two quarters before scoring 11 in the third alone to put her team up 53-22 heading into the fourth.
In a bright spot for Ruston toward the end, freshman Dakota Powell scored eight points in the fourth quarter alone off the bench to match Wilson’s team high of eight points for the Lady Bearcats.
Ruston will be back in action Friday, Jan. 9, at home against Sterlington. Varsity is scheduled to tip off after the JV game, which will begin at 5:30 p.m.
”With Sterlington coming Friday, we can’t linger on much with this loss,” Cooper added. “We have to take it, suck it up, and get better for the next game. Sterlington is going to come in and give us their best game, as well. So we have to be able to perform better and at a higher level than what we put on display tonight.”
