One of the golden rules of basketball is to make free throws, and Hattiesburg broke it.
Poor free throw shooting and being short-handed inside the paint led to the Lady Tigers taking a 41-37 loss by Terry on Tuesday night, ending their perfect mark in region play.
The math is simple. Hattiesburg missed 14 free throws and lost by four points.
“Free throws were abysmal,” Hattiesburg Caronica Jackson said. “When you lose a game by four and miss (14) free throws, you are in the bonus with six minutes left in the fourth quarter. It’s kind of hard to swallow. Especially when you are a guard-oriented team.”
Another problem for the Lady Tigers was that they were without starting forward Chloe Boney, which limited Hattiesburg’s ability to answer the size of Terry’s team.
“We knew they would present challenges to us,” Jackson said. “They are long and lengthy. Their guards are really aggressive. We were down a starter today at literally the last minute. We were trying to fill some holes there that we really hadn’t thought that we would have to fill today.”
Hattiesburg (13-6, 3-1) held a 14-8 lead after Alaysia Jordan hit a three-pointer, but Terry (13-5, 2-2) answered back right away with a shot from beyond the arc, followed by a layup to narrowed the score to 15-13 at the end of the first quarter.
Momentum slowly shifted in the Lady Bulldogs’ favor, with turnovers inside the paint helping Terry take a 20-18 lead at the half.
“They were able to claw into lanes and force us have to play outside,” Jackson said. “We had a stint where we were able to work our high-lows and get some baskets on the inside. They made adjustments, and then we started trying to force that pass and started turning over. Then they started changing the game with their transition offense.”
The start of the third quarter opened with a spark from Elana Robertson, knocking down three straight buckets inside the paint to keep the Lady Tigers in the game with the score at 31-27 in Terry’s favor by the end of the quarter. Robertson led Hattiesburg with 12 points, while Jordan scored 11 points.
“(Robertson) was actually the one filling in for Chloe,” Jackson said. “She’s a sophomore that comes off the bench. She was foul-prone, and so we were having to rotate her in and out of the game to protect and keep her on the floor. She had three fouls early in the third.
“(Robertson) always does a good job for us. She is one of our more physical post players. We are still just working on her back to the basket, but the high-low catch, she does a good job of that for us.”
The Lady Tigers took the lead with an 8-2 run to go up 35-33 by midway through the fourth quarter. But with the game tied at 36-36, Terry came up with a four-point play to give the Lady Bulldogs needed separation. After making a free throw, Terry rebounded the next missed shot and delivered a three-pointer.
“We just weren’t able to recover,” Jackson said. “Up until the last two minutes or so, we held our ground. We struggled rebounding and weren’t physical enough on the rebounds and putbacks.”
The Lady Tigers travel to play Pearl River Central on Friday, with tipoff scheduled for 6 p.m.
Follow @PineBeltSPORTS on Twitter and Facebook.
