Early Pierce surge keeps Brantley off balance

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An early burst by the Lady Bears kept the Brant­ley County High School Lady Herons off bal­ance and unable to make up lost points in Last Tuesday’s game in Pierce County.

“We did not play well defen­sively as a team,” coach Dean Horne said.

The game started with a first quar­ter push by Pierce for an 18–7 lead.  While the Herons did close the gap slightly by the half at 28–21, the Bears increased their lead to 48–32 by the end of the third.  The Herons made up for lost time in the final por­tion of the game but still trailed 10 points 64–54 at the final buzzer.

Horne said that the team would get back in the gym and work on rotat­ing and move­ment along with the ball to try to close the defen­sive gap pre­sented at the game.

Mary Beth Gill led in scor­ing for the night with 19 points fol­lowed by Kris­ten Burch­field with 10 points.

Hunter Stal­lard wasn’t far behind with 9 points and Sum­mer Lee with 6.  Kit­tie Car­reker had 2 and Kier­sten Mor­gan 1.

While the Pierce County game was a tough loss for the Lady Herons, a win against Islands High School served as a pick-me-up for the team when they took home a decent lead by the end of the game.

The Herons led early against the Sharks 14–5 in the first quar­ter and were dou­ble dig­its ahead by the half 31–15.  The Herons con­tin­ued their lead 39–23 in the third before tak­ing off for a 57–36 in the final score.

Horne spoke highly of the team for their strong team effort dur­ing the game.

“I’m very proud of how hard the ladies worked,” he said.

Lee led scor­ing with 20 points for the game and defen­sively with 11 steals.

Both Burch­field and Stal­lard had 12 points for the game.

Gill had 3 points and led in rebounds with 11 for the night.

Both Mor­gan and Ans­ley Jack­son had 2 points each.

But Saturday’s game against the South­east Bul­loch Yel­low Jack­ets man­aged to take some wind out of the sails for the Herons who started out strong by tying 8–8 with the fifth ranked team in the first quar­ter but lost their hold on the team before the half where they trailed 21–11.  The girls never stopped putting points on the board in the third with 21 to the Yel­low Jack­ets’ 29 but were unable to over­come the scor­ing deficit lead­ing to a 47–36 loss.

Lee led scor­ing for the Herons with 17 points and also had 3 steals fol­lowed by Burch­field with 9 points 4 steals. Stal­lard put 5 points on dur­ing the game.  Cee­jay Ham had 3 points fol­lowed by Car­reker with 2.  Gill had 7 rebounds for the night’s game.