After one of the best starts to a basketball season in recent years, the Lady Panthers of Jackson County have hit a couple of bumps in the road.
Unfortunately, those bumps have come in the form of their first two region pairings for the season.
After losing their first region game last Tuesday to Elbert County, the Lady Panthers followed that with another loss to a region competitor, this time Morgan County, on Friday.
Jackson County is looking to refocus their efforts this week, however. They’ll play host to the West Hall Spartans on Friday in non-region action. The pairing could be just the shot in the arm the Lady Panthers need. In their last meeting in November, Jackson County recorded a strong 47-30 victory over West Hall. It was only the second time in the teams’ last seven meetings that Jackson County had come away with the win. The other victory was recorded back in December of 2005.
Since then, West Hall has been on a run of their own, going 4-3 overall, and 1-0 in the region.
On paper, the advantage goes to Jackson County. The Lady Panthers have allowed 201 points scored against them, while West Hall has allowed 309. In points scored, Jackson County has recorded 312, while the Lady Spartans have scored 286.
Tip-off Friday is scheduled for 7 p.m.
Last Friday was a tough night right off the bat for the Lady Panthers, as they found themselves trailing the Lady Bulldogs 18-11 at the end of the first quarter. They were able to close the gap to within three points by the end of the second quarter, trailing 26-23 at the half.
It looked like Jackson County had regained their focus after the half, and moved past the Lady Bulldogs to take a 32-28 lead at the end of the third quarter. But they couldn’t hang on, as Morgan County surged forward to take the lead again and the win, 43-36.
Breanna Drew led the Lady Panthers in scoring, with 14 points. Drew left the game at the end of the third quarter with an ankle injury, and was questionable for this week.
“Friday was a tough loss for me, because it’s a team that we can beat, but we didn’t get the job done,” said coach Chad Pittman. “We didn’t deserve to win. At least against Elbert County, we battled back and took the lead, and played decent in the second half, I felt like. But with Morgan County, we never could sustain anything. It was a roller coaster all night long, and unfortunately we were down more than we were up.”
In their last 12 possessions, the Lady Panthers turned the ball over six times, and missed three field goals while going two for six from the free throw line.
“You’re just not going to win when you do things like that,” Pittman said. “We complimented our turnovers by missing way too many free throws. We were six for 20 for the game.
“It’s a matter of understanding the fundamentals and the basics and being able to do those things. If you can’t, typically you don’t win when you play athletic teams. That pretty much sums up last week.”
Pittman said he wants his team to look at what they did and didn’t do over the course of the last two games.
“We talked about after the game that everybody has to do a self evaluation and take responsibility for their actions, or the lack thereof,” he said. “Last week, we didn’t do that. It was like we tried to find an excuse for why we didn’t do this or that. If they will do that, that will help them individually to regain their focus, and take responsibility for what they did and didn’t do.”
Pittman said hopefully that will help his team regain their focus.
“If we continue to make some of these errors fundamentally, we’re going to struggle in our region. They scored off transition or offensive rebounding when we made mistakes. That gives them opportunities to score, and we don’t get an opportunity. It makes a big difference. We had way too many turnovers Friday night.”
The Lady Panthers were scheduled to host Stephens County on Tuesday night. Results of that game were unavailable at press time.
