By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
Though head coach Nathan Morris thought his team’s performance was far too sloppy, the Lonoke Lady Jackrabbits enjoyed an easy win in the first round of the first Goldfish Classic.
The Lonoke girls pummeled the much smaller Des Arc Lady Eagles 50-21 at the Gina Cox Center on Thursday.
“We’re not going to get mad at a win, but we’re going to have to play better than that if we’re going to have any success against the better teams in our classification,” said Morris. “There are some factors I think played into it. We had a little layoff and you sort of expect things to be a little off at first. This is just our second game here in the new arena. It’s the first one since the first game of the year, so we’re still getting used to this environment. I tell you though, this has been a great turnout this first day. Things are going really well.”
Lonoke enjoyed a vast size advantage at every position. Even 5-foot-5 Jarrelyn McCall, Lonoke’s shortest starter, stood over her defender by a few inches, and was as tall as Des Arc’s starting post players. Despite the size disadvantage, the Lady Eagles continuously forced the ball inside, either throwing it in to post players or penetrating and shooting wild and often blocked or altered shots. The result was a 0-for-13 effort in the first quarter as the Lady Jackrabbits built a 17-0 lead.
Things only got worse from there. The Lady Jackrabbits came out in the second half much more focused and executed well. They scored 12 points in the first 2:30 of the third quarter and Morris pulled his starters with 5:15 left in the period. At that point, Lonoke led 43-4. When the starters left the game, Des Arc had made just 2 of 23 shot attempts and had not attempted a free throw. The Lady Eagles made 5 of 16 shot attempts the rest of the way and hit 6 of 10 free throws.
Lonoke won the rebounding battle 27-17, but Morris was still disappointed in the number of second-chance shots Des Arc got, even though very few were successful.
“Rebounding is still a factor,” Morris said. “We haven’t done that very well this year. We never got into our sets because we were pushing the ball the whole time, and we looked extremely uncomfortable when they pressed us.
“It was a good game to have after a break. We still got the win and hopefully we can leave it behind us. We know what we need to work on and we have to improve on it quickly because everything starts to count here pretty soon.”
McCall and Amanda Sexton led Lonoke with 12 points each.
In other first-round games, Estem demolished Hazen 47-17. Batesville and Bald Knob played the most exciting game of the first round. The Lady Pioneers had a 12-point lead in the third quarter, and then had to hold on for dear life to win 51-49. In the other first-round game, perennial 2A power England defeated Lonoke’s 4A conference mate Stuttgart 57-31 to advance in the winners’ bracket.
Lonoke’s semifinal game against Batesville was played last night after Leader deadlines. The tournament championship game is scheduled for 6 p.m. today.