Monterey girls ride hot shooting in win

Published 12:01 am Tuesday, January 13, 2015

Lady Wolves’ Sydnee Smith goes up for a basket against LaSalle defender Gracie Skinner during the Monterey girls 45-28 victory Monday night. (Ben Hillyer / The Natchez Democrat)

Lady Wolves’ Sydnee Smith goes up for a basket against LaSalle defender Gracie Skinner during the Monterey girls 45-28 victory Monday night. (Ben Hillyer / The Natchez Democrat)

The Monterey Lady Wolves kept shooting Monday, and the ball continued to find the bottom of the net as Monterey cruised past LaSalle 45-28.

“I thought we played hard and got after it,” Monterey head coach Cary Shively said. “We are starting to get our legs back from the vacation. We took a little three-week break and didn’t do a whole lot, so last week we played two games, and (Monday) we really started getting our legs back. We were doing things we were doing before the holidays, and I thought we worked extremely hard tonight.”

Monterey jumped out to an early lead and never looked back. It took LaSalle more than half of the first quarter to record a basket, and that was all the Lady Wolves needed to jump out in front.

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“We have to play good defense, and I feel like we did that tonight,” Shively said.

Monterey held LaSalle to single digits in three of the four quarters.

Not only was their defense solid, but the Monterey offense was hot from the field, recording eight three pointers in the contest.

“I tell them their job is to shoot it if it is an open shot,” Shively said. “And then my job is to take them out if they’re not making it.”

But Shively didn’t have to do much of that Monday night as the shots kept falling one after the other for Monterey.

Five different Lady Wolves recorded a three-point basket in the game, led by Tiffany Weeks, who sunk three and led the team with 11 points. Sydnee Woodruff hit two three-pointers and was second on the team with eight points.

Monterey put the pressure on a small LaSalle team, that was made up of just six girls, all night and was never threatened by the Lady Tigers.

LaSalle trailed by more than 10 points most of the way.

Despite registering a convincing win, Shively still thinks his team has a ways to go.

“I don’t think we are where we were before the break, but I think we are well on our way to where we were and to getting better than we were,” Shively said.

“I think we’ve had a really good year so far and our kids have worked hard. I just want us to keep getting better and working hard every day.”