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Lady Warriors 58, Epiphany Global Lady Falcons 39

In the first game of the season, the Lady Warriors were in mid-season form. An all around solid performance from the Unity team vaulted them to a 19-point victory on Monday night, with the help of Shy Brokenborough’s 21-point performance, and Catherine Cutler’s 24 points.

The Lady Warriors took advantage of many Epiphany turnovers and converted them into points.

Starting point guard Kipper Case used her speed to capitalize on Lady Falcons’ mistakes that led to quite a few transition buckets throughout the course of the game.

Sometimes, the Lady Warriors tried to push the ball down the court too quickly, which led to some mistakes. Head coach Harvey Case said mistakes were expected, but was happy with his girls’ performance in an early November matchup.

“I think we played great defense and we hustled all night,” Coach Case said. “We made some mistakes passing like you would expect in an early game, but we made up for it with our hustle and some solid defense.”

Brokenborough cleaned up the rebounds and collected many put back buckets for the Lady Warriors, easily picking up the double-double performance. She had seven rebounds in the second half alone, despite battling through a knee injury,

“It was team effort. If we didn’t have Paige (Sawyer) and Kipper there’s no way we would’ve won tonight, they’re the star of the show,” Brokenborough said after the game. “We missed a lot of lay ups today. I know I missed at least 10. We just need to take our time before our shots. Sometimes it’s hard for me though because I’m getting double-teamed every time I touch the ball.”

The Lady Warriors cruised to victory, and they will get prepared for their weekend tournament on Friday and Saturday in Unity Christian’s gymnasium.

 

Epiphany Global 59, Warriors 54

 

Unity Christian battled back from a 22-point deficit on Monday evening, but the Falcons hit enough free throws late in the game to spoil the comeback bid.

Epiphany began the game on a 16-0 run. The Warriors found some open looks, but couldn’t get them to drop early on.

In the first half the Warriors turned the ball over and gave up too many easy transition baskets. After a couple of timeouts, Unity finally started to settle into their zone defense and did a good job of closing out on shooters for the remainder of the game.

The Warriors went on a big run to begin the second half, cutting the Falcons lead to 10 with the help of Colby Case’s and Nicholas Jones’ points in the paint. Jackson Kirkman hit a big three-pointer with three minutes remaining in the game to cut the deficit to six points, but Epiphany’s point guard was able to break the Warriors press and find himself and teammates in space for a couple open lay ups. Kirkman led the team with 27 points.

The Warriors continued to battle. They were in the bonus midway through the third quarter and drained the vast majority of their free throws down the stretch. Unfortunately for them, they couldn’t hit from the field in the final two minutes that left them short of the comeback victory.

“We weren’t executing and we just didn’t get into our press in that first half. That’s what we preached before this game, is setting up our press and we just didn’t do it,” head coach Joey Craft said. “We were taking the same shots they were taking and just weren’t hitting them. I told them we were still in this game and told them to run the press because it would help us. It did, we cut a 20-point lead to five at the end of the game. We battled our butts off though so that’s good heading into the weekend.”

The Warriors host a weekend tournament for both boys and girls varsity basketball on Friday and Saturday.