A dominating first quarter performance carries Lady Panthers to a 52-48 win over rival Yazoo City High.
The win gave the Lady Panthers a 6-0 record and the season sweep over Yazoo City High.
The Lady Panthers started off the game in high gear with a big first period in which they scored 13 and gave up only five points.
In the second period of play, the Lady Indians had an offensive spark that led to 17 points, but the Lady Panthers scored 13 once again to take a 26-22 lead into the half.
After the half, Yazoo City slowly chipped away at the lead with a 14-13 third period that made it a 39-36 game heading into the final period of play.
The Lady Panthers showed a lot of consistency in the fourth period, where they once again put up 13 points, and despite giving up 12 points, they came away with a 52-48 win.
Yazoo County head basketball coach Patrick Nutter was not overly pleased with how his team performed in the middle periods, but he was happy with the end result.
“I thought we were pretty flat in the second and third quarters,” Nutter said. “We got outrebounded pretty badly. In the end, we did what we needed to do and got out of there with a win.”
De’Ja Moore led the Lady Panthers in scoring with 14 points in the victory.
Destiny Epps was second on the team with 13 points in the win.
Ke’Anna Norwood chipped in nine points in the winning effort, while Shanecia Weldon and Ciara Thompson each had eight points.
Nutter was also happy to see that they didn’t have to rely on a single player to do all of the scoring.
“It was good to see our scoring evenly split up between five girls,” Nutter said. “We’re a better team when everyone can score.”
The Lady Panthers will try and keep their perfect record intact when they face the Lady Cowgirls of Humphreys County on Friday night, but before that, they faced a tough 7-0 Amanda Elzy team on Tuesday.
Despite the undefeated record, Nutter believes none of that matters if it doesn’t carry over to conference play.
“All of the games before District don’t really count in the long run,” Nutter said. “They’re good confidence builders, so they’re good to play, but they don’t mean a whole lot. We play Amanda Elzy on Tuesday, and they’re 7-0. That will be a tough way to get district play started, but we should have a better feel for where we are then.”
The game between Yazoo County and Amanda Elzy was not upon completion by press time.
Tip-off for the game at Humphreys is set for 5 p.m.
The Lady Indians will regroup and try and get their second win of the season against Greenville on Friday night.
Tip-off for the road contest is set for 6 p.m.
