Lady Eagles Run Past Bevill State

While their final margin of victory made their 87-69 win over Bevill State Community College seem easy, the Meridian Community College Lady Eagles had to score 26 of the game’s final 36 points to turn Saturday’s tossup into a blowout in the Rush Invitational.

Leading 61-59 with less than seven minuets to go, MCC got a basket from NaDosha Strickland with 6:19 showing and back-to-back three-point plays from Jennifer Wair in a 32 second span to go up 69-59 with 5:23 remaining

By the time the Lady Eagles completed the 11-0 run, they were up 72-59 with only 1:54 left.

“We changed defense and went to a zone because we couldn’t stop their big girl one on one,” MCC head coach Hilary Allen said. “Not only could we not stop her, we couldn’t stop her with the double down.”

“Basically we went to the zone so we could play someone behind her and someone in front of her. Fortunately, they didn’t make some shots from outside against us with that.”

“It seemed like the offense just took off from there too because they had some long rebounds where we were able to get out and get some fast breaks. Strickland got a couple of run outs and Wair got a couple of offensive rebound stick backs and some three-point plays.”

“Strickland obviously did a good job.”

“Wair was playing against a very good basketball player tonight and as a freshman, it’s on of her first experiences doing that. I thought she did okay. That girl got 24 points, but a lot of those were offensive rebounds that she’s just better than us at. There’s not much you can do with that. She’s just bigger and stronger than us.”

“Holly Dial handled the ball well. We had heard before the game that they were going to try and pressure her. They thought that they were a bit quicker and they probably were. But I thought she handled the ball really well. Because we run so much in our offense, we’re going to have some turnovers along the way, but I think she minimizes the number that we’re going to have.”

MCC, which took a 34-32 lead into halftime in improving to 5-0, got 24 points from Strickland , 16 points from Wair, 14 from Dial, 11 from Anesia McBride, nine from Hilal Yildirim and seven from Zirconia Hopkins.

Strickland also had 16 rebounds, while Wair, McBride and Hopkins each had 10. The Lady Eagles hit 13-16 at the free throw line over the final 61 seconds.

MCC returns to action Monday night at East Mississippi Community College.