STARKVILLE — Starkville High girls and boys basketball teams rebounded from losses with district wins over Murrah on Tuesday night. The girls won, 63-37, before the boys won, 67-32.
The Jacket girls improved to 8-5 on the season with the win, but most importantly 1-0 to start district play ahead of the new year.
“I told them before the game, everybody is 0-0 now,” Jacket girls basketball head coach Matt Wilbanks said after the game. “It’s a new season, the rest of the season has been practice leading up to it. Everything being new, we’re finally starting to run a bit of a system. Defensively, we’re flying around a little more in our press, so I’m pleased with tonight.”
The Jackets suffered losses to Northwest Rankin and Choctaw Central last week, prompting a team meeting to help clear the air on their struggles. It seemed to have worked as they came into Tuesday and lit up the opposition.
“I think they responded well to that,” Willbanks said of the team meeting. “We had a couple of good days of practice, and tonight I thought we played pretty hard.”
Zariyah Edwards led the team with 17 points, and 11 of her teammates joined her on the scoresheet. The production across the board highlighted the team’s dominance as well as the minutes available to players off the bench.
The girls didn’t allow a field goal until about midway through the second quarter, holding the visitors to just 10 points total in the first half as they pulled away to secure a strong win and a 1-0 start to their district campaign.
“I’m happy with our effort tonight. If we can keep building on that, we’ll be where we want to be.”
The Jacket boys improved to 10-3 with their win, also the first district win of the season, and were able to showcase plenty of athleticism with a few dunks and alley-oops for the crowd in their 67-32 win.
TJ Warren led the team with 11 points, followed by Sanchez Brooks with 10 and Jaden Tate and Kobe Hendrix on nine each. In total, nine of the 10 Jackets who played scored.
“We know that Murrah is kind of rebuilding with a new coach and everything, but we told the guys to get out of there injury-free and we wanted to work on some things to improve on,” head coach Anthony Carlyle said after the win. “We’ve got a couple of tough games coming up over this holiday stretch.”
The Jackets rebounded from their own tough loss, a 49-46 overtime decision against Huffman at a tournament in Birmingham last Saturday. They held an advantage in that game but failed to pull away in regulation. Carlyle embraced the opportunity to compete against a tough opponent, and though the loss was difficult to swallow the team responded well against Murrah.
“I think they did well,” Carlyle said of their response to the weekend defeat. “Each opportunity we get a chance to perform, the better we can work on our chemistry and playing together as a team. We took a tough loss on Saturday and we have two more tough games this weekend. It’s a chance to see if we have improved on that.”
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