Lady Bearcats win home opener

Ruston used persistent pressure and timely shot making to win its home opener over Minden in a 44-35 battle on Tuesday, moving the Lady Bearcats to 1-1 on the young season.

The Lady Bearcats forced Minden into 32 turnovers and held the Crimson Tide to one basket over the final 6:00 of the third quarter – welcomed signs of progress for first-year head coach LaShanda-Smith Cooper.

“It’s an awesome feeling. It’s a great feeling,” Cooper said after picking up her first win at Ruston. “The main thing that I liked the most was the girls really bought into defense this game. Honestly, before we got ready to come out, I told them, ‘Hey, we gotta be a defensive team. Offense comes and goes. But defense, you gotta have heart to play defense.’ Once I gave them that speech and everything they just locked in and got the job done.”

Ruston had trouble with Minden’s zone defense early in the game, unable to create much offense in the half court as the ball stuck and outside shots were well off the mark. By the end of the first period, Ruston trailed 9-3 with its only field goal coming as the clock expired.

But Ruston finally picked up its intensity in the second quarter and began to turn Minden over, leading to easy fastbreak offense and looks against a non-set defense. The Lady Bearcats began to collapse the zone a lot more and passed off the ball for open shots to lead 18-17 at halftime, with Journi Douglas putting Ruston on top with 22 seconds to go in the second quarter.

Minden briefly retook a 19-18 lead out of halftime but Ruston pulled back ahead as Goia Tatum nailed her second three-pointer of the night to put the Lady Bearcats up 21-19. From there, Ruston held Minden to just four points over the final 6:00 of the third as Ruston went into the fourth with a 26-23 lead.

The fourth quarter got tight for a second as Ruston’s 38-28 lead shrunk to 40-35 with 1:21 left as Minden started turning offensive rebounds into second-chance points, forcing Ruston to call timeout. But out of the break, Ruston made its free throws late and came up with three steals on bad Minden passes to ice the game away.

Tatum and Samiya Lewis combined for 11 of Ruston’s 18 points in the fourth, with Lewis knocking down her lone three-pointer of the game, along with a pair of free throws and a layup.

“Samiya really stepped up tonight, made some big shots for us. Defensively, she was active. She was all over the floor, good rotations. She really had a good night.”

Lewis finished with 9 points overall, with 7 coming in the fourth. Tatum, who finished with a team-high 10 points, came up with two steals in the fourth to go with two layups.

Journi Douglas had 9 points, while Bailee Harrison had 7 points and Jasmine Summerford had 6 points.

Ruston returns to action this weekend at the Parkway Tournament.