The best thing about sophomore and juniors is they become juniors and seniors.
Columbus High School girls basketball coach Yvonne Hairston is anxious to see how quickly her team matures after its two biggest tests of the season.
Columbus capped an 0-2 showing in the 14th annual Joe Horne Christmas Classic with a 68-49 loss to Callaway on Saturday.
On Friday, Columbus lost to Jim Hill 70-55 in a matchup of two of the top five teams in The Clarion-Ledger”s Mississippi High School Activities Association Class 6A rankings.
For Columbus (5-3), the games were an opportunity to show that despite its youth (the team has only two seniors) it had arrived and was ready to compete with the state”s top teams.
Columbus, which entered the weekend No. 3 in The Clarion-Ledger”s rankings, showed it could hang with Jim Hill, the No. 5 team in Class 6A, and Callaway, a Class 5A power, but its lack of experience and height and too many self-inflicted wounds proved too much to overcome.
“It has been a tough weekend,” Hairston said. “We played two really good basketball teams, but it is a learning experience for us to know where we need to go and what we need to do to reach the goals we have set for ourselves.”
Columbus appeared to have regrouped Saturday and led Callaway (6-3) for most of the first half and into the third quarter. But a driving basket by Kiki Patterson (game-high 27 points) that tied the score at 37 with 3 minutes, 25 seconds to play in the quarter was the last one the Lady Falcons hit until late in the fourth quarter. Columbus went 9:50 without a basket and 0 of 13 from the field in that stretch.
As expected in a drought like that, Callaway surged into the lead behind the floor leadership of senior point guard Alisa Ross (team-high 24 points). Danielle McKinney added eight points for the Lady Chargers, who didn”t have another player with double-figure points.
Callaway made up for that fact with a balanced attack that featured two other players with seven points and one more with six. The Lady Chargers also battered the Lady Falcons on the offensive glass. Callaway often got two and three shots, which helped it overcome some poor shooting early in the first half.
Hairston said Columbus needs to get more physical and aggressive if it wants to dream about Jackson as a destination in 2011. She said she won”t use the fact the team largely relies on sophomores to be an excuse.
“Once you put that uniform you still have to play,” Hairston said. “You have to be mature enough to handle the pressure they put on you. … They have been taught how to block out. The mental lapses we have sometimes are just not good.”
Maggie Proffitt, who was battling the flu, had nine points. Five other players scored for Columbus, but no one had more than three points.
On Friday, Jim Hill received 16 points from Derita Luckett, 15 points from Kierrariel Mitchell, 14 from Jade Hooper and 10 from Jaliesa Hicks in its victory.
Jim Hill, which improved to 9-2 with the win, lost to Callaway earlier in the season and to Natchez by one point on three free throws in the last second prior to facing Columbus.
“We”re going to try our best to take one thing at a time,” Jim Hill coach Jackie Ross said. “We don”t want to look too far ahead because when you start looking at the end first you forget everything in the middle, and you might not end up getting to the end.”
With Terry, Natchez, and Wingfield in Region 3, District 6, Ross knows it will be a struggle for her team to be one of two that advances to the postseason. She feels confident her team can make a good run if it survives district elimination.
To do that, Ross said her team used the motivation of the rankings to help it bounce back. It also helps when you have plenty of options to make opponents think who they want to try to beat them.
“With us it is definitely pick your poison,” Ross said. “We have so many options if you try to take away one aspect of the game we have enough options to help us out in the other aspect of the game. The team that is going to play against us is going to have to play a full game. You”re not going to be able to say, ”If we take this person out of the game I know it will discombobulate this team.” It won”t. We”re pretty deep in the guards and we”re pretty deep in the post. We”re just not deep as far as people on the bench, We have a small team, but we run every day to make sure we can stay in shape and play a full four quarters.”
Hairston said Columbus” youth also showed against Jim Hill. She said the loss showed her what the Lady Falcons need to work on and that her players need to do a better job on blocking out, rebounding, taking care of the basketball, and limiting turnovers if they want to learn from the loss.
Patterson led Columbus with 28, while Proffitt added 19.
“Come January, late February, hopefully those girls who weren”t blocking out or following instructions when they got out on the floor in February they will be following instructions,” Hairston said. “The young girls just have to grow up faster. That”s just how it is.”
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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