Poor shooting hampers Viqs

There would be no squeaky close game, no heroic come-from-behind win and no chance for the home fans to enjoy their role as sixth man Tuesday night as Middle Tennessee Christian administered an old-fashioned 47-22 spanking to homestanding Community. It was their lowest offensive output in recent memory.

Viqueen Marissa Jones looks for an open teammate after beating Middle Tennessee Christian's Amy Mullins (34) to a loose ball. (T-G Photo by Jimmy Jones) [Click to enlarge]

The Viqueens (9-5, 3-3 District 9-A) had extreme trouble with the Lady Cougar press and suffered through double-digit turnovers and poor shooting in the first quarter to fall behind 13-5 as the horn sounded.

Things went from bad to worse as Community managed to score only four points in the second period on baskets by Courtney Vassar and Marissa Jones. MTC's Katie Dunn and Lili Vaught combined to score nine points to lead their squad to a 24-9 halftime advantage.

"If you had told me that we would hold this team to just 24 points at the half I would have felt pretty good about our chances," Viqueen coach Allison Layne said. "We played pretty decent defense but we couldn't get a shot to fall for nothing.

"We are beat up and banged up and I had four players suffering from the flu, but we still managed to hang around for a while. No excuses for the way we played the rest of the way, though."

The Viqueen defense was able to shut down Lady Cougar star Dunn, but Lindsey Lee picked up the scoring slack with six points to lead the visitors to a comfortable 38-20 margin as the final stanza began.

The Viqueen offense remained stagnant and scored only one basket in the closing period.

"We have a long way to go and a lot of work to do, especially in the mental aspect of the game before we can accomplish our team goals," Layne said. "We shot 15 percent from the field tonight, and missed so many of them within 6 feet of the basket, because we allowed their defense to make up the step we had on them by hesitating before we shot.

"Defensively, I thought we stuck to our game plan pretty well, but that is about the only positive we can take from this game.

"Until we can get our heads back where they need to be we will never be able to get to the next level."