Ringgold girls stun Coahulla Creek
For the better part of two-and-half quarters this past Friday night, the Ringgold Lady Tigers were a team looking for answers.
For the final quarter-and-a-half, the Lady Tigers were the ones giving the test.
Trailing by 12 points with just under three minutes left in the third quarter, Ringgold ripped off an incredible 26-0 run over a 7:30 span of the second half and moved to 7-2 in Region 6-AAA with a 57-48 victory at Coahulla Creek.
With the victory, Ringgold (13-4 overall) pulled even with Murray County with a 7-2 record in region play headed into this week. The Lady Indians dropped a 5650 decision at first-place LFO on Friday, though Murray County currently holds the head-to-head tiebreaker on the Lady Tigers by virtue of a 53-45 win back on Dec. 17 in Chatsworth.
Ringgold still has another game with LFO — this Friday at Ringgold — and they will get Murray County again on Feb. 1, this time back on Danny Vest Court.
Both teams began Friday’s clash with tight pressure defense that resulted in two scoreless minutes. But the Lady Colts (6-10, 3-6) limited Ringgold to just four points in the opening period and built up a 19-9 lead early in the second quarter as the turnovers were starting to pile up for the visitors.
Midway through the second quarter, however, the Lady Tigers finally began to find some offense. An 8-0 run featured four points from Baileigh Pitts and two points on a very savvy move by freshman Kayla Lopez in which she threw an inbound pass off an unsuspecting Lady Colts defender before grabbing the bouncing ball and laying it off the backboard.
But trailing 19-17, Ringgold surrendered 11 unanswered points, including a pair of 3-pointers. They fell behind by 13 before a Leiah Henderson basket finally broke the drought and the Lady Tigers eventually went to the locker room on the wrong
end of a 32-20 deficit.
The first five minutes of the third quarter featured much of the same as the Lady Tigers continued to trail by double digits. They were down 42-30 when Rachel Lopez got free for a 3-pointer with 2:51 left in the quarter.
And suddenly, like a see-saw, the momentum immediately flipped.
Addi Broome buried a 16-foot baseline jumper 30 seconds later and Pitts scored four straight points, including a strong move in the lane with 1:43 left, as the 9-0 run cut Coahulla Creek’s lead down to 42-39 going into the fourth quarter.
Ringgold began the fourth the way it had finished the third. Tight pressure defense, crashing the glass and boxing out on rebounds would pay big dividends over the first half of the final period.
Pitts scored seven points in the first 4:15 of the quarter. Broome and Hannah Scott chipped in with two apiece, while a fired-up Rachel Lopez drained a pair of 3-pointers as the 9-0 third-quarter spurt exploded into a game-changing 26-0 run that gave Ringgold a 56-42 lead with less than four minutes remaining.
The Lady Colts scored the next six points of the game, but they got no closer as Ringgold went on to celebrate the victory.
Pitts, who carried the team on her strong shoulders at times on Friday, had a huge night with 24 points and 12 rebounds, despite battling against bigger players in the lane, while Rachel Lopez knocked down five 3-pointers, four in the second half, and finished with 17 points.
Scott and Broome finished with five points each, followed by Kayla Lopez with four and Henderson with two.
Brinkley Reed had 24 for Coahulla Creek, but she was the only Lady Colts player to finish in double figures.
COAHULLA CREEK BOYS 64, RINGGOLD 42
The Tigers stayed within striking distance for most of the first half. Two early 3-pointers by Cooper
Sexton helped Ringgold trail by just four points, 18-14, at the end of the first quarter.
A low-scoring second quarter saw just four points scored, all by the Colts, in the first 4:49, as the home team built an eightpoint lead.
Back-to-back buckets by Brevin Massengale and Caden Dodson chopped the Colts’ lead back down to four with 2:31 left before halftime, but Will Locke hit from behind the arc with 1:32 to go and the home team took a 27-22 lead into intermission.
Ringgold (5-12, 1-8) trailed 3529 late in the third when the Colts (10-6, 5-5) went on a 9-0 run. But Luke Rominger drained a threeball for the Tigers just before the buzzer to trim the deficit to 44-32 and Sexton hit another 3-pointer with 6:47 left in the game to pull his team back to within 10 points of the lead, 47-37, as Ringgold looked to rally.
However, the Tigers were outscored 11-3 over the next five minutes as the Colts clamped down on the defensive end. Reserves for both teams got in the game late as the hosts pulled away for the region victory.
Sexton finished with 12 points on four 3-pointers. Massengale added 11 points. O’Reilly Matthews had six and Rominger went for five. Dodson and Alex Otting had three points apiece, while Jordan Wideman rounded things out with two.
Mario Edwards and Lucas Mulkey paced the Colts with 16 points each.