Photos by Greg Barnett
Athens – The bad news for the Concord women’s basketball team is they struggled in spurts offensively Tuesday night against Bluefield State.
The good news is their defense was there to pick them up.
The Mountain Lions forced 18 turnovers, holding the visiting Blues to just 23 percent shooting from the floor in a 56-43 win in their home opener Tuesday at the Carter Center.
With his team trailing 14-6 at the 2:59 mark of the first quarter, Concord coach Kenny Osborne called a pressure look that contained the Blues and helped his girls turn defense into offense.
“(Bluefield head coach Paul Davis) did a good job of trying to dictate tempo,” Osborne said. “They’re much improved and he’s doing a great job considering he just got started at the end of September but that’s what it was. I just thought we were slow, sluggish and we went to that little 2-2-1 press and we got some easier baskets. We got (Riley) Fitzwater involved and (Maddie) Ratcliff got involved and that jumpstarted us and I told them it was ugly – a 13-point win. But when you win by 13 and your second-leading scorer Maggie Guynn, who’s about 60 points from 1,000, scores one point and Jaisah Smith, you fourth leading scorer, doesn’t score then you’ve got to be pretty happy with that.”
The pressure worked like charm, helping the hosts finish the opening quarter on a 12-0 run to take a 16-14 into the second. The pressure led to easy buckets for Ratcliff, who picked off two passes and scored 12 of her 14 points in the first half.
“She’s a player,” Osborne said. “She should’ve started last year but some dummy didn’t start her and she should’ve been freshman of the year. She gives all kinds of energy and got us going in the first half. When she gets to the rim she’s so fast, but she got us going.”
The aforementioned 6-foot-4 Fitzwater helped the cause on defense as well. As the back line defense, she deterred the Blues from driving the ball when they broke down the press, blocking three shots in the first half. Her 18 points and 11 rebounds were both game highs with 16 of her tallies coming in the first half.
The combo of Fitzwater and Ratcliff helped the hosts to a 34-22 break at the intermission as they outscored the visitors 30-8 in the final 14 minutes of the ball.
The Blues still had one last breath.
A 3-pointer courtesy of Alexus Tucker trimmed the deficit to nine early in the third but after a stagnant two-minute stretch where neither team scored, junior guard Jazz Blankenship added cushion to the lead. Back-to-back 3s from the Wyoming East grad in a 10 second span staked CU to a 43-25 lead, bringing the crowd to its feet.
“Jazz is a streaky shooter but I’m glad she hit those,” Osborne said. “We were struggling and those were six points there back-to-back. If she had hit one more the roof would’ve went off the place and it would’ve been over then, but that was big for us. Jazz does give us a lift. The first half she struggled offensively and I thought she was going to break the board on two of her shots, but she really got us going there.”
While the Mountain Lions were separating the Blues struggled to keep up, making just 4 of their 17 shot attempts in the quarter. Compounding those struggles was the inability to get shots off in time. Four times the visitors turned the ball over on shot clock violations.
“They were wanting to dictate us and we just did a good job keeping them in front of us,” Osborne said. “I was pleased with our defensive effort. Our offensive effort disappointed me but again we did what we had to do on the defensive end and we got the win.”
Katrina Tucker led the Blues in scoring with 11 points while Bluefield High graduate Dani Janutolo finished with 10. Fitzwater and Ratcliff were the only players in double figures for the Mountain Lions.
Concord improves to 3-0 on the season and will travel to The University of Charleston on Saturday. Bluefield drops to 0-3 and will host Kentucky State on Friday.
BSC: 14 8 5 16 – 43
CU: 16 18 11 11 – 56
Scoring – BSC: Londen Coleman 4, Azaria Binford 9, Alexus Tucker 9, Katrina Davis 11, Dani Janutolo 10; CU: Riley Fitzwater 18, Maddie Ratcliff 14, Maggie Guynn 1, Gracie Robinson 6, Alexis Phillips 9, Jazz Blankenship 8
3-pont goals – BSC: 6 (Tucker 3, Davis 3); CU: 3 (Blankenship 2, Robinson 1)
