By Thomas Sellers Jr.
The latest showdown between the rival Munford Lady Cougars and Millington Lady Trojans featured two teams with sub .500 records.
With both team looking to climb back toward a winning record, it was the host Lady Cougars Friday night that lit up the Munford Gymnasium scoreboard. Steve Poindexter’s Munford squad improved to 4-5 on the season beating the Lady Trojans 60-19.
“People have to understand, this is not a very inexperienced group,” Poindexter acknowledged. “They’ve only played 9 games together. Anytime you have a new group of people having to take on new roles of carrying the load and leadership, you’ll be in tough situations.
“There’s a learning curve,” he added. “We’ve played some tough teams earlier. We got beat in overtime at Bartlett. We got beat by Houston, who is probably the best team in Memphis. We got beat on the road in the first game of the year at USJ. And they’re undefeated. They’ve beaten everybody.”
Tested, the Cougars came into the game against Millington apparently focused. Munford was ahead 22-0 after the first quarter.
The Lady Cougars were paced by Gabby Crawford, Johnna Jones and De’Asha Banks.
The Munford advantage grew to 32-0 in the second quarter starting with a Kyla Taylor to Dejanae Potter layup to make the score 24-0.
After another Potter bucket, Shania Johnson scored using a spin-move in the lane.
Johnson scored seconds later to make the tally 30-0. Jones concluded the 10-0 run with a layup.
Millington finally got on the scoreboard courtesy of a pair of Tracie Clark foul shots.
Munford responded with another run outscoring Millington 9-0.
The Lady Trojans closed out the first half with a pair of Bria Barnes three-pointers. Barnes hit her first triple with a minute left in the second quarter.
As the buzzer sounded to close out the first half, Barnes launched another triple that found the bottom of the net to make the score 43-8.
The Munford starters played played most of the third quarter keeping the advantage sizable. Crawford closed out the night for the regulars with a layup making the score 51-10.
“In a game like this, toughness is are we still discipline, still focused,” Poindexter said. “Can we avoid going through the motions because we can. They didn’t tonight.”
Poindexter said his team took a step forward in building toward a championship level playing four quarters against Millington.
“It’s a matter of chemistry and toughness,” he said. “We’re taking those steps in the right direction. This game tonight, we did the things we were supposed to do. We did a good job of getting points in transition, hustling down the floor.
“They did a great job of looking up and not being selfish,” Poindexter said. “We got a lot of easy baskets with non-selfish play. We played team basketball.”