Kim Cram-Torres was frustrated after her team lost to Upperman last Saturday in the semifinals of the District 7AAA Basketball Tournament at Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville.
She thought the Lady Jets had a great chance to win the game, but didn’t play as well as she believed they could have and ended up with a loss.
After some focused practices the past couple of days, Cram-Torres was pleased to see the Lady Jets come out energized and focused from the opening tip Tuesday night, and grab a 71-62 victory over White County in the consolation game of the district tournament.
“It feels great to get back on track with the win,” the coach said after the game. “White County is great and they’re so tough. You have to be ready for that toughness and they really challenged us today as they always do …
“It felt great to see our players play the way they’re capable of playing. I think the girls were not satisfied about the way they responded in Saturday’s game, and they fixed it. That was a good sign of maturity.”
Cumberland County improves with the win to 23-8 on the season and will open the Region 4AAA tournament Friday at Tullahoma, which is currently 17-11 for the year. Tipoff is slated for 7 p.m.
The Lady Jets got some hot shooting from Emery Baragona and Abby Houston to open the game and that helped CCHS earn a 17-14 lead after the first period and a 37-27 advantage at the intermission.
Jalynn Baldwin scored in the paint for Cumberland County to aid in the surge.
Cumberland County pushed its lead to double digits in the second half, running out to a 51-39 lead after three quarters.
Aliyah Hawkins and Lexi Carroll came up big for CCHS. White County answered and made a run late, predominantly behind the shooting of Nia Powers and Celeste Reed, to pull close with the final nine-point margin.
Baragona led the way with a game high of 26 points. Baldwin scored 14, while Houston and Hawkins scored 12 each. Jorja Anderson tallied five points and Carroll had two.
Powers scored 20 points to lead White County in scoring. Reed had 17.
“The thing White County does so well is they crash the boards and they get a ton of rebounds,” Cram-Torres said. “I knew that was coming, and I knew we were going to have to deal with that the whole game. We just challenged our kids, ‘you’ve got to be tougher. We’ve got to do a better job of boxing out, and we’ve got to do a better job of getting a stop.
“I thought they hurt us with that in the first half, and it was a little spotty in the second half. But when we came out, we did a better job.”
The physicality of playing White County began to take its toll on the Lady Jets in the second half.
“In the second half, I thought we were about as exhausted as we’ve ever been, mentally and physically,” Cram-Torres said. “There were some mental breakdowns there that were a direct result of how exhausted we were.”
The coach said one of the bright spots for her team was its offensive production and how it was spread around the roster. She said that will be key as CCHS moves forward.
“Something we’ve been talking about all year is how we need more from everybody,” Cram-Torres said. “Tonight was one of those nights where we got more from everybody. Our bench came in and gave us some extra offense. We had four kids in double figures and we’ve been preaching we’re pretty good when three or more of our players finish in double figures.”