Lady Trojans lead wire-to-wire in rivalry game against Charles City
New Kent's Kyah Otey (left) and Kayla Tirrado (right) make scoring a difficult task for Charles City's Santaesha Hickman (14).Andre' Jones photo
New Kent’s Lady Trojans looked to snap a four-game losing skid dating back to the 2013-14 season against Charles City’s Lady Panthers. Apparently, Lady Trojan head coach Neko Burson gave his team extra motivation heading into the Dec. 5 contest.
The visiting Lady Trojans catapulted out to a 17-0 lead in the first quarter and had little trouble disposing of host Charles City 54-25.
New Kent started out hot offensively from the onset, with jumpers provided by Kelsey Yates, Peyton Slater, and Caitlyn Via to push out to a 6-0 lead. On the defensive side, the Lady Trojans implied a box-and-one technique against the Lady Panthers, with one player designated to guard Charles City leading scorer Santaesha Hickman while the other four players remained in a zone.
With Kayla Tirrado and Slater drawing the assignment on Hickman, New Kent frustrated the guard. Tirrardo forced Hickman into an errant pass, leading to a Slater steal and assist to Yates to push the lead to double digits for the first time (10-0). Three more shots from the floor with an additional free throw garnered the visitors a 17-0 lead.
Charles City finally cracked the scoreboard with 1:47 in the opening frame courtesy of Hickman’s banked three-pointer, but New Kent finished on a 7-2 run to take a 24-5 lead heading into the second quarter. Close range baskets by Sierra Locklear and Kayla Hyndshaw initiated an 8-0 run to push the advantage to 27 for the visitors (32-5). Meanwhile, the Lady Trojans defense kept Charles City from the scoring column for another four minutes. Hickman accounted for all four points in the second frame for the hosts, but New Kent maintained a 37-9 advantage at the halftime break.
With neither team providing much of an offensive showing to end the third quarter (41-13 in favor of New Kent), Charles City mounted its strongest offensive run of the game. Baskets from Lady Panthers Veondra Brown and Kailin Holland helped string together a 9-0 run to reduce the gap to 20 points (41-22). But the Lady Trojans elected to work the ball inside to Hyndshaw, who scored nine of the team’s final 13 points to give the visitors the convincing victory.
After the contest, Burson commented on his defensive strategy and the aggressive offensive to kick off the matchup.
“We read the paper and we knew Hickman was the main source of their offense,” the victorious head coach said. “We wanted to take her out of the game offensively by attacking her defensively.
“As for us, after we shot around ten percent against Tabb, we went back to practice and got up as many shots as we could at practice,” Burson continued. “Right now, our problem is that we are not finishing games like we need to. We’re not in midseason form so we’re going to work on our conditioning in our next few sessions.”
For Charles City head coach VaShaun Otey, he had little comment about the execution of his team’s game plan.
“Inexperience,” he said. “We’re going to get better mark my words, but right now it’s just inexperience.
“We came out so flat on defense and that’s not acceptable,” Otey added. “It’s not much more I can say. We have a lot of work to do.”
New Kent (2-1) received double digit scoring from Tirrardo (14), Slater (12), and Hyndshaw (11). Yates contributed eight, Via tossed in four, and Brynne Jones scored three.
Charles City’s (1-3) Hickman scored 12 points in the loss. Brown added eight, Holland scored three, and Jaelah Wyatt chipped in with two.