By RAY BENTON
Leader sports editor
The Jacksonville Lady Red Devils showed tremendous resolve and toughness in earning a huge win on Friday at the Devils’ Den. The Lady Devils handed Pulaski Academy its first conference loss of the season, creating a three-way tie for first place in the 5A Central, and did it after a miserable start that resulted in a 20-4 second-quarter deficit.
“It’s a great win for us, no doubt about it,” said Jacksonville coach William Rountree. “That second half, we played like I felt like we could play all along. There’s been a big adjustment for these girls. But our scorers scored when we needed them to. Our ball handlers did a great job of getting things going and not turning it over. I thought we defended well. Those last two quarters were our best basketball of the year. And how bout Tiffany Smith coming through in the second half after not getting on the board at all in the first half. That was a great performance.”
Smith finished with a team-high 20 points. After missing all 10 shot attempts in the first half, she went 7 for 9 in the second half, and made 3 of 4 free-throw attempts.
“Tiffany is a uniquely talented player,” Rountree said. “I’ll tell you what helped her in this game. She’s known as our shooter, and those shots weren’t falling. In that second half, she put the ball on the floor and got to the basket, and got a couple to fall for her.”
Jacksonville (9-8, 5-1) managed just one basket the entire first quarter against Pulaski Academy’s matchup zone as the Lady Bruins built a 16-2 lead heading into the second period.
The visitors came in with a clear game plan of utilizing its considerable size advantage and feeding the ball to 6-foot post player Alex Otwell.
That strategy worked as long as Jacksonville failed to hit from outside, but in the second quarter, senior guard Keke Alcorn drained two-straight three pointers that forced the Lady Bruins, not to change defenses, but to at least extend the zone a bit further out.
Jacksonville never stopped applying pressure defensively either, and it began to take a toll in the second quarter.
The Lady Red Devils forced six turnovers in the second period, including four steals – two by Markela Bryles in the middle of the zone press, and one each by ball-pressuring guards Alcorn and Antrice McCoy.
Jacksonville won the second quarter 17-13 and went into halftime trailing 29-19.
“I told them at halftime, we need to win the third quarter,” Rountree said. “That will get it into single digits and we can go from there. They went out there and they did that. They got us right back into the game. I really felt going into the fourth quarter we had a great opportunity to win the game.”
Indeed, by the time the fourth quarter began, Pulaski Academy’s lead was down to 39-35. The Lady Bruins scored first in the third quarter doing just what they had done in the first half, feeding Otwell down low.
From that point, the Lady Red Devils went on a 12-2 run with Smith leading the charge. Her steal and layup at 5:10 made it 31-26.
With three minutes left, she hit a three pointer that completed the run and made it 33-31.
The two teams traded a pair of buckets on four consecutive possessions until Jacksonville finally got a stop and had its first opportunity to tie or take the lead. The Lady Devils came up empty on two possessions and Otwell closed the quarter with another bucket.
Jacksonville opened the fourth quarter on fire from the floor, scoring eight points in the first two minutes and taking its first lead of the game. Alcorn tied it for the first time at 41 with a running floater with 6:13 lead. McCoy then got a steal and a layup to put the Lady Red Devils up for the first time at the 5:56 mark.
PA called timeout to regroup, and the break stopped the onslaught momentarily. The Lady Bruins scored out of the timeout and Jacksonville threw the ball away on two consecutive possessions without being under pressure. That forced Rountree to ask for a timeout, and after his 30-second talk, Jacksonville controlled the rest of the game.
With the scored tied at 43, Smith launched a 30-footer that ripped the net chords and gave Jacksonville the lead for good with 4:49 left in the game. Alcorn followed that with a steal and a layup just 22 seconds later. That forced another PA timeout, and this time they came out of the break in a triangle and two defense, aimed at stopping Smith and Alcorn from getting any open looks outside. So Jacksonville went inside. Bryles scored the next five points for the Red Devils, two buckets coming from nifty interior passing by McCoy.
“That’s where playing a complete game comes in,” Rountree said. “We got back in it a lot with our defense – forcing the tempo. When they took that away, we were still effective in the half-court offense.”
PA’s Mackie Kuhn hit two free throws to make it 55-52 with a minute left, but the Lady Bruins could not even get another shot off.
Three PA possessions ended in Jacksonville steals to close the game – one by Alcorn, one by Sacha Richardson and McCoy picked Kuhn from behind with 10 seconds left to seal the win.
Jacksonville finished with 12 steals, three each by McCoy and Bryles, and two each by Smith, Alcorn and Richardson. The Lady Devils forced 20 turnovers.
Both teams went 17 of 35 from two-point range. PA made 15 of 18 free-throw attempts while Jacksonville hit 7 of 11. The Lady Bruins (14-5, 5-1) made just 1 of 7 three pointers while Jacksonville went 5 of 19.
Alcorn dropped in 14 for Jacksonville while Bryles scored 13. Otwell led all scorers with 21 while Kuhn scored 17.
