Lady Pats look to gain momentum tonight against Wynne

Lady Pats look to gain momentum tonight against Wynne

Marion girls attempt to earn a much- needed conference victory tonight over Yellowjackets

sports@theeveningtimes.com

The Marion Lady Patriots (4-3 overall, 1-1 conference) seek their fifth of the season win tonight against the Wynne Lady Yellowjackets (0-8, 0-2).

Tonight’s game is pivotal to the Lady Pats, who have struggled to win with consistency, according to Lady Patriots Head Coach Shunda Johnson.

“It’s really a much-needed win, not only for our confidence but to bounce back from the overtime loss against Greene County Tech,” Johnson said.

The Lady Patriots last played in an overtime loss to the Greene County Tech Golden Eagles (4-3, 1-1) on December 9th. Since then the Marion ladies have had three practices. Those practices allowed the ladies to improve on defense, according to Johnson.

“We really needed it,” Johnson said. “We worked on three different types of defensive presses. We’re going back to defensive fundamentals. We’ve been working on defensive rotations, defending cutters and all of our defensive principals.”

Executing those fundamentals properly is important to the ladies’ chances of victory, not just tonight but throughout the remainder of the season according to Johnson.

“Jakyya Clay is probably going to start drawing double teams from teams in the near future,” Johnson said. “So, we need our guards to make some shots and open it up for [Clay]. We also need our guard containment defense to pick up. Those are some things that as a team we need to improve on.”

While considering areas of improvement which are necessary for success in the Lady Pats upcoming fourgame tournament in Collierville, Johnson maintains and preaches to her players focus on tonight’s game against the Yellowjackets. Johnson stresses the importance of not overlooking the Yellowjackets, a team still searching for its first win of the season.

“We haven’t been preaching that [the Yellowjackets are winless] the last few days,” Johnson said. “We’re trying to rely a message that we haven’t put consecutive wins together. We just have to work on our stuff and execute our game plan. We need to come in, defend our home and get ready for our next opponent.”

Some of the things the Lady Pats need to execute in order for a win, according to Johnson, are controlling the boards and turning turnovers into points.

“We need to be effective in our pressing and converting turnovers and steals into points,” Johnson said. “We need to control the boards. Offensive boards give us second and third opportunities to score. That will be a major factor for us.”

The game will be a homecoming of sorts for a Wynne player who some of the Lady Patriots players are very familiar with. Lady Yellowjacket senior Destiny Jones played junior high basketball for Marion and played high school basketball for the Patriots for a year before following her father 41 miles away to Wynne.

“I jokingly told the girls ‘You can be friends with Destiny but as soon as 3:45 p.m. comes tomorrow, she’s your opponent. You can be friends with her again as soon as that final buzzer goes off.”

After tonight’s matchup, the Lady Patriots are next slated to take to the hardwood again December 20th against the Nettleton Lady Raiders (8-0, 3-0) in Jonesboro at 5:00 p.m.

Tonight’s contest against the Lady Yellowjackets will be broadcast live on Country 92.5 F.M. Starting at 6:00 p.m., Patriots broadcasters Ken Mitchell and David Fogleman offer play by play coverage of both the boys and girls varsity matchups.

By Collins Peeples