Pulaski carries momentum into showdown with RRD foe Hidden Valley
By Cody Dalton
sports@southwesttimes.com
DUBLIN – What started as a first win of the season on Dec. 23 against George Wythe came full circle on Wednesday, when the Lady Cougar basketball team evened up their record against that same Maroons team, 63-23, at the PCHS gymnasium.
“We were kind of discouraged at first because we were 0-7,” said sophomore guard Sydney Anderson. “After we started winning and kept getting wins, it got better. We started playing as a team.”
“I think it was mostly the ‘Cougar Clash’ tournament,” said junior guard Elizabeth Thacker. “We got confidence back and we got into a rhythm. Now we are on a roll. Hopefully, we can keep it up.”
“Seven wins in a row,” said Cougars coach Jason Grubb. “I’m proud of them for battling back and evening up their record. We’ve talked about the most important games of the season. The next one is coming up. We’ve got the top half of our district in Hidden Valley, Blacksburg, and Salem coming up. We want to make sure we are ready to play them.”
Pulaski (7-7, 2-0) would start out the game in an early struggle with the Maroons, who kept things close in the opening moments, 2-1.
The Lady Cougars would break out of their opening slump and score 11 points in a row, taking their one point lead and stretching it out to 13-1. During that scoring run though, Pulaski’s Daisy Ball and Brittany Lawson would pick up their second fouls.
Kasey Holcomb would also pick up her second towards the end of the quarter, as the Cougars began to get into foul trouble. The Cougars led 24-3 after the first.
Once again, Pulaski would play physical and fast paced, but continued to rack up the fouls. Raiven Patterson, Brittany Lawson, and Daisy Ball would all have three fouls before the end of the quarter, which forced Jason Grubb to go to a smaller lineup.
“They had a kid, #50 [Kristen Atwell], who was doing a really good job inside and being really aggressive with the ball, which made it hard for us to defend her without us fouling,” Grubb said. “Our kids were getting frustrated because they were getting so many fouls on them. I wasn’t concerned from a game standpoint, but I was trying to keep our kids out of foul trouble. You never want anyone to foul out. So we kept rotating different players on her and several kids picked up fouls. I had confidence in the rest of our team that if some of the kids got in worse foul trouble, we would have been ok. We tried to keep them out of foul trouble, but it still didn’t work.”
Helping the Cougars with depth was a returning Alexis McCloud, who was playing in her first game since Dec. 28 against Pathway Christian. McCloud would injure her ankle on a three point attempt in that game. Grubb was pleased with her return performance.
“Alexis first came back and has been itching to play,” Grubb said. “I felt like she played well considering she has been out so long. We were anxious to get her out on the court and see how she moved on her ankle. She has been scrimmaging in practice and we just wanted to make sure she was going to be safe out there and not re-injure something. I think she did a good job. It is going to take her a while to get back to where she was before she was injured, but she is a hard worker and I’m sure she will bounce back fine.”
Atwell and the Maroons would continue to capitalize on the Cougar foul trouble. She would go to the free throw line four times and hit seven of her attempts, cutting into the lead. At halftime, the score was 35-14.
The Cougar offense and defense would shine in the third quarter. After coming out of the halftime break, Pulaski would score at will and hold the Maroon offense to just one basket in the quarter. The Lady Cougar lead grew from 21 points at halftime into 33 points at the end of the third quarter.
An exhausted George Wythe squad, who had been in a running game with the Cougars all night, finally gave way to exhaustion and frustration in the second half. Raiven Patterson guided the Cougars in the final quarter with eight points. She finished the game with 20 points and also had six steals and four rebounds.
Sophomore Sydney Anderson scored ten points, grabbed nine rebounds, and had foul steals. Kasey Holcomb led the Cougars with seven steals and also scored five points.
The winning streak continued for the JV squad, who picked up another impressive victory on the season against George Wythe, 41-22. This now marks ten straight victories for the team, whose last loss was against Carroll County at home on Dec. 7.
“After that loss, we kind of regrouped,” said JV coach Tiffany Payne. “We had a team talk. We had a lot of girls who weren’t focusing on the team aspect. There were a lot of ‘me’ and ‘I”. We’ve really honed in on that and really worked on things. If you do it the right way, you will win games. Everyone will generally get a score. Everyone will get time. When they finally started to realize that they lost two games playing their way and decided to do it my way and see what happens.”
“They’ve done a really nice job. They’ve started to work together and have really gelled as a team. They generally will do anything I ask without question. They work hard. This is one of the hardest working group of kids that I’ve ever had. I love this group of kids. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. They give me everything they’ve got every second on the floor. I wished I had ten more just like them.”
Sara Wright scored ten points for the Cougars in the first quarter and helped Pulaski (10-2) would pull out to an early 10-0 lead. She would finish the game with 12 points total. Savannah Jones added nine points and Carli Brewer added six points.
The George Wythe game marks the final non-district contest of the season, as the Cougars now face a tough district schedule that features a home game against Blacksburg and two tough road games against district powers Hidden Valley and Salem in the next week.
Many of the Lady Cougars are excited about the first of these challenges – playing Saturday against Hidden Valley on the road.
“It’s always a thrill to play Hidden Valley,” Patterson said. “I remember my freshman year that it was a pretty big game to play in. It still is. They are good competition.”
“It’s important that we win because it counts as a district game,” Anderson said. “We really want to beat Hidden Valley. We know we have a lot of tough competitors.”
“It’s going to be just as important as last year,” Thacker said. “I guess we kind of hold a grudge from last year. We want to beat them.”
Grubb offered his thoughts after the game about playing against the Titans on the road Saturday.
“They’ve got a very good team with very good players and are well coached,” Grubb said. “I think it is going to be one of our toughest tests of the season. I feel confident about our player’s ability. We will just have to see when we get down there. We have an hour bus ride. The kids have to maintain their focus and maintain their intensity when they get on the opposing court. We’ve had it kind of easy here recently because we’ve had some home games. We’ve done well. We just have to carry that intensity from our home gym to their gym.”
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