Lady Dawgs win in close game
By SEAN HANEY
Cove Leader-Press
On Monday night the Lady Dawgs hosted the Buda Johnson Cougars for a non-district game.
The Lady Dawgs started off the match dominating the court as they took an early 15-0 lead before the first quarter ended. That lead didn’t last too much longer as the Cougars would stop making mistakes and would slowly start chipping away at that lead. The Cougars found their groove and could not be stopped from shooting and making three-point shots. At one point the Lady Dawgs were only ahead by one point, but they never lost the lead as their hard work and excellent defense kept them ahead.
The Lady Dawgs would end up winning the game 40-31 with Shakaira Zeigler having 10 points at the end of the game.
“We had a really difficult game last game of the tournament on Saturday we didn’t play well,” Head Coach Derik Short said. “So, my biggest concern going in was whether we would bring the intensity and the passion we needed to execute and execute and my kids. I thought the kids did a good job tonight.”
“We’re very up and down team and right now the thing that we haven’t got a hold of is a sense of consistency. So, we can play an excellent game one time and then not show up the second game. We’ve got to develop that consistency where every game we bring, we bring our best and we just haven’t gotten that point.”
Short talked about the questionable calls on the court by the referees.
“It’s the same thing we always talk about and that is that we can’t control the referees and you can’t let that take you out of the game. And I think there for a little bit, we allowed that, we allowed them the refs to take us out of our game. But once we sat down and we talked about it, I think they did a much better job maintaining that composure. It’s tough to do when the refs are not doing a good job.”
He also talked about the momentum speech he gave the girls near the end of the game.
“I just told them we needed to just settle down, focus on our execution. Trust what we do,” Short said. “That was the moment that the refs made several bad calls in a row. We compounded it by making several mistakes and so we lost momentum completely. And, you know, I thought we were fine up until that point.”
Short had a specific game plan going into this game and it was to put pressure on the Cougars.
“We knew going in that if we got some pressure on them that they would turn the ball over and they did that,” he said. “And when things are swirling, and things are moving so fast, you just need to say hey, try to slow try to slow the game down. And that’s what we tried to do.”