Defense powers Wildcats past Bears
By Bart Moss / For the FCT
The Tharptown Wildcats held the Phillips Bears to just 11 points in the first half to lead the way to a 62-42 area win in front of their student body.
“It was good to play well in front of our students,” said Tharptown coach Shannon Benford. “They brought us a lot of energy, and the guys fed off of it and played well.”
Tharptown pulled down 22 defensive rebounds en route to the win.
“We’ve been stressing going to the boards and getting rebounds and limiting opposing teams to one shot per possession. We did a good job today,” Benford added.
The Wildcats outscored the Bears 16-2 in the first quarter and led 28-11 at halftime. Phillips didn’t score a field goal until 2:20 to go in the first half.
Phillips made a third-quarter comeback attempt, outscoring Tharptown 19-10 to cut the lead to 38-30. Winston Nolen scored eight straight points to start the fourth quarter to put the lead firmly back in the Wildcats’ hands.
“Winston came up big for us in the fourth quarter,” said Benford. “We had a big lead and slowly let them back in the game. Fortunately, we were able to put it away in the fourth quarter.”
Cole Daniel led the Wildcats with 18 points. He was followed by Levi McCormack with 16 points and Nolen with 15 points. Miseal Saldana added seven points, Edward Lopez four points and Aaron Creasy two points.
Varsity girls: Phillips 62, Tharptown 34
The Tharptown Wildcats started out strong against the Phillips Bears but just didn’t have enough fire power to sustain the effort, losing 62-34 to the top-ranked Bears.
The game was tied at 11-11 at the end of the first quarter on two big three-pointers by Catie Dawson, but the Bears took the lead at halftime 33-19. Phillips extended the lead to 47-26 in the third quarter.
Ameliah Dawson led Tharptown with 10 points. Catie Dawson followed with eight points, Aly Vandiver with five points, Adrianna Borden with five points, Shaylee Wieting with two points, Brooke Daily with two points and Linda Bahena with two points.
