A perfectly executed out-of-bounds play enabled the Winona girls basketball team to edge Eupora 41-40 at a tournament hosted by Winona this past weekend. The Lady Tigers also defeated J.Z. George 67-22, but were beaten by Montgomery County 41-37 during the tournament, leaving the team with a 5-6 record.
With 6.9 seconds left in the game, Winona trailed Eupora 40-39. “We had the ball out of bounds under our basket,” said coach Veronica Helms. “We set up a post to post cross section screen under the basket.”
Natori Weathersby set a screen, then rolled open, took the inbounds pass from Tommesha Brown and made a layup for the win.
Brown led the Lady Tigers in scoring with 16 points, Weathersby had eight.
Winona had no trouble against J.Z. George. The Lady Tigers scored the first 16 points and led 41-11 at the half. The game was played with a running clock in the fourth quarter.
Brown had 18 points and Weathersby scored 14.
The Montgomery County game for the tournament championship was the third game in three days for both teams and Helms feels that fatigue was a factor. “We're not very deep, so that's hard for us,” she said. “We just couldn't score. We had some shots from under the basket, but missed them, especially early in the game when we could have taken a lead.”
Mycala Helms led Winona with nine points.
The Lady Tigers played Calhoun City Tuesday and have a home game Friday with Charleston. “That's a winnable game for us if we play hard,” Helms said.
Tigers
The Winona boys basketball team lost four games last week to fall to 0-11. The Tigers were defeated by Louisville 85-50, Eupora 71-27, J.Z. George 66-61 and Montgomery County 61-41. The last three were in their own tournament.
“I learned a lot about my team in the tournament,” said coach Presley Coleman. “I had just gotten my football players back and I wanted to use the tournament to find out who can play going forward and try to get my rotation together for the start of district play in January.”
The J.Z. George game was the one that really hurt because the Tigers led most of the way. A 20-2 run in the first quarter gave the Tigers a 12-point lead. They were up by five, 59-54, midway through the fourth quarter, but were outscored 12-2 the rest of the way.
J.Z. George made 10 free throws down the stretch, and outscored Winona 20-5 from the line. For the game, the Tigers were 5 of 14 on free throws.
Coleman blamed the loss on poor shot selection. “We took way too many bad shots. We basically shot ourselves out of the game.”
JaTyler Moore led the Tigers with 26 points, including five 3-pointers. But he missed two free throws with 1:11 left and the Tigers trailing 62-61.
Moore had a big night in the loss to Louisville with 36 points, including six from behind the arc.
Sean Merritt led the team in scoring against Eupora with nine points. Moore had eight.
The Tigers played Calhoun City Tuesday and will be back home Friday against Charleston.
