After such an emotional, hard-fought, one-point loss last week with district powerhouse Livingston Academy, the Cumberland County girls came out of the gates swinging Tuesday night when they traveled to Smithville to battle DeKalb County.
After a somewhat slow start that saw the Lady Jets lead 24-14, Cumberland County left no doubt in the second half. CCHS got big efforts from Sydney Wilhite and Jalynn Badlwin to pull away for the 54-42 victory.
“I thought the girls probably felt some pressure tonight,” said Cumberland County coach Kim Cram-Torres.
“They know that they wanted and needed to win. They wanted to play better tonight, so I think they probably pressed a little bit.”
The coach continued, “But we talked about making sure we came out of here with a win, and the girls took care of that.”
The CCHS girls are 13-4 overall and 1-1 in the district. DeKalb County falls to 8-9 on the year and 0-2 in league play.
“I think we need to do a better job of making shots,” Cram-Torres said. “We’re missing some shots we typically make. And not making those shots put a lot more pressure on us than there needed to be.”
Cumberland made a lot of shots in the third period as Wilhite and Baldwin were on fire. Baldwin tallied the team’s first six points of the period to push the Lady Jets’ lead to 30-20.
That’s when Wilhite took control. She hit a 3-pointer to make it 35-23 with 3:27 on the clock, and when she hit back-to-back treys later in the stanza, the Lady Jets led 43-26 with seconds left to play.
“We knew from the beginning we wanted to pound the ball inside to Jalynn and we wanted her to make shots,” Cram-Torres said.
“And for Sydney, she struggled a little bit, but we tell her to keep shooting. We have all the confidence in the world in her and we encourage her to keep shooting, and she did.”
Wilhite led all scorers with 20 points. Baldwin had 19 points and Lauren Clark scored six.
Aliyah Hawkins tallied four points, while Carly Turner had three and Alexis Carroll scored two.
Ella VanVaken led DeKalb County with 17 points. Avery Agee had 12.
Cram-Torres said her team was tested Tuesday with coverage of 3-point shooting.
“The thing Dekalb does well is shoot the 3-pointer, so we wanted to do a good job of defending that,” Cram-Torres said. “I felt like we did that well at times.
Cumberland County will now prepare for another tough road trip when the Lady Jets visit Sparta for a battle with White County Jan. 12. Tipoff is set for 6 p.m.
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