Roxborough Girls Squander Lead, Drop Opener

The conventional wisdom coming into this season was that the Indians—who were returned zero players from a team that won zero games—would be too inexperienced to compete.

In the first game, at least, the conventional wisdom was right.

After an inspiring first half Wednesday afternoon before an engaged home crowd, the girls' basketball team was outscored 39-1, and opened its season with a 52-22 loss to the Franklin Learning Center Lady Bobcats.

Sophomore guard Shakura Bragg-Taylor led the Indians with nine points, and senior guard Chriscinda Harder finished with eight.

"Overall, I guess I was happy with how we played, but there are definitely some things we need to improve on," said Indians head coach Bob Stowman after a postgame team address. "They made adjustments, we weren't experienced enough to readjust to them, and we made too many dumb fouls."

Things went well in the early going for the young Indians. They played sound, energetic, defense and didn't allow themselves to be pushed around by the Lady Bobcats much bigger interior players. They acquitted themselves well on the offensive end also. After a seven-minute scoring drought to start the game (it was snapped by a Brittany Williams turnaround jumper), Roxborough scored 22 points in the subsequent 10 minutes.

The primary weapon for the Indians was the outside shot. During a 19-5 Roxborough run that spanned from mid-second period to early third, Bragg-Taylor and Harder, in addition to their ball-handling duties, combined for five three-pointers.

The Indians entered the second half with an 18-13 lead, and widened it to 21-13 with the last of their sophomore guard's three threes.

FLC took over from there.

The Lady Bobcats began double and triple-teaming the Indians' two scoring threats, forcing the now-befuddled Indians into bad shots, forced passes into traffic, and all manner of hardwood sins.

FLC translated these turnovers into layup after layup after layup. Then they made a few more layups.

A 21-13 Roxborough lead became a 26-21 deficit by the end off the third quarter. Seven minutes later, the Indians had given up 35 unanswered points and were down 48-21.

"They started playing a 1-2-2 defense to take away the outside shot, and we just couldn't get anything going after that," Stowman said.

The players, to their credit, chose to focus on the positives.

"I thought I played a good game," Harder said. "I don't know what happened at the end there, I was fouled out already, but I got my points. I got eight or nine.

"It wasn't a bad way to start the season."