East Mississippi takes convincing sweep of Meridian

By Robby Atkinson / Special to The Star
The Meridian Star
Fri Nov 12, 2010

MERIDIAN — The East Mississippi Community College Lions took the short drive down Highway 45 Thursday night to face its long time foe MCC and walked away with all smiles. The Lions earned the sweep of the Meridian Community College Eagles at Graham Gynasium in front of a packed house with the EMCC women defeating the Lady Eagles 86-71 and the EMCC men taking a 94-74 to complete the road sweep.

The East Mississippi Lady Lions opened the night with tough zone defense and hot first half shooting to give MCC its first loss of the 2010 season. The Lady Eagles opened the season with impressive wins over Wallace-Selma and Bishop State, but found difficulties against the Lady Lions. EMCC took a 37-21 lead at the end of the first half and was led by Natalie Tate with nine points in the first. Raven Howard also chipped in with eight first half points off the East Mississippi bench. The Lady Eagles struggled shooting from the floor in the first half and went on a shooting drought that spanned over six minutes. Norianna Haynes was the only spark offensivley for MCC in the first half with six points and Arnissa Galloway also had six points in the opening period for the Lady Eagles.

MCC (3-1) tried to mount a comeback in the second half and eventually cut the EMCC lead to 47-29 with 15:04 left in the game. Kayla Hawkins drilled a three point shot and Haynes hit a pair of buckets to draw the Lady Eagles to within striking distance. MCC would never get any closer than nine points and dropped the 86-71 loss at the hands of East Mississippi.

Chadisty Hickman led all scorers with 21 points for East Mississippi and 15 of those points came in the second half. Howard ended the game with 12 points off the bench for the Lady Lions and Kiara Quinones ended her night with 12 points and 10 of those points came in the second half of play.

Haynes led the Lady Eagles in the scoring department with 25 points and Bianca Powell had a great second half shooting and ended the evening with 15 points and 11 of those came in the final half. MCC returns to action this Saturday at home against Georgia Perimeter at 2 p.m. EMCC will host East Central next Monday at 5:30 in Scobba.



EMCC 94
MCC 74

The Lions completed the sweep of MCC with an impressive second half of perimeter shooting to earn the 20 point road victory. East Mississippi lead 35-29 at the end of the first half, but ran away in the second half due to great shooting from sophmore guard Deonte Alexnader. The Nashiville, TN native ended the night with 32 points and hit four straight three point field goals in the opening minutes of the second half for the Lions.

Former Meridian High standout Donovan Walker had a solid night shooting the ball for the Lions with 18 points and Joe McCoy came in with 12 points in the road win for EMCC. Pierre Crawford led the Eagles in scoring with 20 points and Nick Watkins added 13 points in the home setback for Meridian.

EMCC improved to 4-0 for the season and MCC suffered its first defeated of the 2010-2011 season and dropped its record to 3-1. MCC will return to action this Saturday at home against Marion Institue at 4 p.m. EMCC will host East Central next Monday at 7:30 p.m.