The Columbus girls basketball team just needed to slow it down.
It was the main problem the Falcons diagnosed at halftime of Tuesday’s home rivalry game against Starkville. In the first half, Columbus rushed through its offensive sets, failed to take the ball to the rim and totaled just 11 points. The Falcons trailed the Yellow Jackets by four points when the halftime buzzer sounded.
“We had to calm down and get everything settled, realize what they were doing,” Columbus senior Aniya Saddler said.
The Falcons traded their man-to-man defense for a 2-3 zone. They made their rotations on defense and got the ball inside on offense. And Saddler, simply put, caught fire.
She scored 20 of her 24 points in the second half — 10 in each quarter — and Columbus rallied for a 45-39 win over the rival Yellow Jackets.
“They just came back out and got motivated to do what we needed to do,” Columbus coach Yvonne Hairston said.
The win puts the Falcons at 2-0 amid a tough four-game stretch to open the season and with a rivalry win already in their pocket.
“It feels great,” Saddler said. “It feels really great to beat somebody that everybody’s been wanting to see.”
Starkville coach Kristie Williams knows the Falcons’ offensive and defensive potential, and she saw it in full force in a third quarter in which the Jackets were outscored 20-6.
“They came out with a lot more intensity in the second half, and they wanted it more,” Williams said. “And when you want it more than the other team, you’re gonna come out on top regardless of anything else.”
A 10-0 Columbus run that was pure Saddler truly flipped the script on Tuesday’s game.
She put back an offensive rebound to cut the Starkville lead to two, then tied the score with a layup on the next possession. She split a pair of free throws, then got another pair and made both. Saddler capped the whole thing off with a 3-pointer from the right wing, turning a 19-15 Starkville advantage into a 25-19 Columbus lead.
“She just really went to work,” Hairston said.
The performance by Saddler and the Falcons was unsurprising to Williams, who was almost waiting for a Columbus run after an uncharacteristic first half.
“I knew Columbus was not going to take that first half lightly,” Williams said. “They were gonna come out and give us their best, and that’s what they did, and unfortunately, we couldn’t match their intensity.”
Starkville gave it a good shot with a strong scoring effort in the fourth quarter, pulling within seven points with under a minute to go. Then Saddler hit a baseline jumper as she was falling out of bounds — plus the foul. She made the free throw, pushing the lead back to double digits, and the Yellow Jackets managed just two late scores to cut the deficit.
When the final buzzer sounded, the large Starkville faction was quiet, and the Falcons’ faithful cheered their resilient team. It was the perfect ambience for such a comeback, Hairston said.
“The atmosphere was set for us to be where we were, and we were able to pull it out tonight,” she said.
Theo DeRosa reports on Mississippi State sports for The Dispatch. Follow him on Twitter at @Theo_DeRosa.
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