Posted on December 13, 2018.
By Thomas Sellers Jr.
The Tipton-Rosemark Academy Lady Rebels didn’t need extra inspiration Friday night with the Fayette Academy Lady Vikings coming to town. But the Lady Vikings proved to be the team ready to win and pull off an upset jumping ahead 15-12 after 8 minutes. “We might have psyched our selves up a little bit too much,” TRA Head Coach Cameron Pridemore acknowledged. “We were too hyped. I told them at halftime, ‘We’re not seeking up on people anymore. Those days are gone.’ People are going to come out swinging and we’re going to get people’s best at the beginning of games. “You’ve got to be able to weather that storm because it is coming,” he continued. “We will have to be able to punch back. And I think we did a good job of that. We settled down and started making better decisions. We had better shot selections. We just settled in better after the first quarter.” The Lady Rebels outscored Fayette Academy 38-16 over the last three quarters to prevail 53-28. The game was 24-20 at the break with Lady Rebel Abby West scoring 6 points in the second quarter. TRA’s Megan Sanfratello gave her team the scoring punch it needed in the first quarter to stay close by hitting a couple of three-pointers. Then the Lady Vikings employed a special defense to shut her down. “Megan came out and hit a few threes,” Pridemore noted. “For the second quarter and half of the third quarter, they started to box-and-one her. She did a good job of handling that. We had some other girls like Abby, Brianna and Eva that really stepped up during that time. They made plays that made them come out of that box-and-one. That was huge. She handled that very well by staying within herself. She let it come to her and didn’t force it.” Early in the third quarter Sanfratello drained a triple that made the score 29-20. Then Brianna Hall followed with a steal leading to a layup on the other end making the deficit double figures for Fayette Academy. Later, Sanfratello continued to keep the Lady Vikings defense honest with a jumper that made the tally 36-23. Then West turned up the heat on defense with a steal leading to a bucket and 38-23 advantage. In the fourth quarter, Eva McIntosh went to work in the post with a bucket. She later drew a foul leading to a foul shot that made the score 46-26. In the closing moments of the game, TRA worked the ball around the court with McIntosh receiving a pass just outside the paint. She feed West with a behind-the-back bounce pass leading to a bucket to make the score 53-26. “Obviously a rival is going to bring out all kinds of stuff — emotions,” Pridemore said. “But it was a big district game as well. With the injuries that we’ve got and we’re in the process of getting over, this was the first time Mary Catherine Turner played real minutes this year. She got hurt at a play-date in Arlington. She played 4 minutes last night to get back into the swing of things. So this was her first time she was really out there.
“We’re getting through injuries,” he concluded. “We have other injuries like somebody out with a concession who has been starting for us. That’s what made this game so big. Not dropping one was we’re getting over the hump of getting people healthy. A lot of people stepped up and helped us win this game.”
