Cathedral splits basketball games

Published 1:46 am Saturday, January 30, 2010

NATCHEZ — Cathedral coach Burnita Dunbar’s words after the loss to Bogue Chitto Friday summed things up perfectly.

“We have a lot to work on,” she said. “We have a lot of room to grow.”

That was evident to anyone watching Friday, as the Lady Bobcats dominated the Lady Green Wave 65-45. Cathedral fell behind 20-5 after the first quarter, and it wasn’t until Bogue Chitto inserted their backups midway through the fourth quarter that Cathedral began to score consistently.

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Dunbar pinpointed her team’s struggles on a lack of unity, and said the bad chemistry that resulted crippled their ability to get anything going on offense.

“We got caught up in an individual thing instead of a team thing,” Dunbar said. “When you have that kind of a breakdown, your attitude towards each other and the game is affected.”

Epiphany Jackson led the Lady Green Wave in scoring with 14 points. Ana Perry added 13 points and Ginny Daggett had 11.

For Bogue Chitto, Shelby Tobias finished with 13 points. Teareon Rogers had 12 points and Dorey Miller tallied 11 points.

Cathedral (9-12, 3-4) has two remaining district games against Sebastopol and St. Aloysius, and Dunbar said she and her players were going to have to examine where they are if they want to win both games.

“I have to try and make sure that everyone is in this together,” Dunbar said. “If we would just buy into that, we would be a much better team than what we appear to be (right now).”

One positive for the Lady Green Wave was their finishing 10-for-19 in free throw shooting, a marked improvement, Dunbar said.

“We’ve been working on those and other key things in practice,” Dunbar said. “It’s still a work in progress. We still have a ways to go, but we’re getting there.”

Cathedral boys 46, Bogue Chitto 45

For the second night in a row, the Cathedral boys found themselves in a game determined by just one point.

This time, however, that point was in their favor.

The Green Wave survived a last-second attempt at reaching the basket by Bogue Chitto to come out on top Friday night.

“After last night, having our hearts ripped out in a tough one-point loss, this speaks to our young guys’ resiliency,” Cathedral head coach Peter Arnold said.

“We started off sluggish, and it was just a grind-out game. We knew we were going to have to grind it out for 34 minutes, and I told our guys, we have to do whatever it takes to grind it out.

“The ball just bounced our way tonight. Last night, it didn’t bounce our way, but tonight, it did in the end.”

Collin Hammons led in scoring for Cathedral with 16 points. Caleb Upton added 10 points.

Justin London was the only double-digit scorer for Bogue Chitto. He tallied 14 points.

Cathedral said his team’s soft-tempo approach was the perfect counter-attack to the Bobcats’ speed.

“We were just trying to be patient,” Arnold said. “When you’re playing people that are much quicker than you, you just have to stay in control and make good decisions.”

Cathedral rose to 9-10 on the season, 4-4 in district play.