The Howard Payne Lady Jackets are in the midst of their first win streak of the season following a 90-58 victory over Dallas Christian College Monday night at the Brownwood Coliseum.
The contest pitted HPU head coach Yannick Denson against his mentor, Larry Tidwell, a 45-year coaching veteran in his first season in charge of Dallas Christian, an NAIA Division II school in the NCCAA conference.
“For me, it was more in my head playing my former boss, Larry Tidwell, who’s a great legend in the state of Texas for basketball,” Denson said. “He’s had stints at TCU, Baylor, Kansas and Texas Tech, He coached at UTRGV and gave me my first opportunity at Lamar University. Big ups to him and DCC and their future, they have a legend, and I was really glad to get this win today.”
Seventeen Lady Jackets (2-3) saw playing time Monday night, all 17 registered at least one point, and no one played more than 18 minutes.
“I thought we had a total team effort tonight,” Denson said. “Everybody touched the floor, everybody scored.”
Regarding getting everyone on the roster valuable game experience, Denson said, “It’s always important. You feel bad sometimes as a coach when you don’t give everybody an opportunity in game time. The old saying is you earn your playing time in practice so these young ladies know that we’re going to compete every single day in practice against each other and the only way you’re going to move up is to knock somebody out. For us, having that mindset and having that mentality when we hit the floor against opponents will help the transition from practice to game play.”
Three Lady Jackets finished in double figures – Lily Janek with a team-best 14 points, Bria Neal with 12 and Delaney Ingram with 10. Also scoring for HPU were Catlyn Ward and Kayla Brigance with seven each; Chelsey Harris with six; Payge Grable and Trinity Johnson with five apiece; Amanda Turpin and Michayla Chaffin with four each; Mallory Garcia, Anastasia Matthews and Trynadee Greenwell with three apiece; Salina Ali, Kendra Brown and Ariel McKoy with two each; and Haley Arledge with one point.
Howard Payne shot 51 percent (32 of 63) as a team, 36 percent (10 of 28) on three-pointers, and 59 percent (16 of 27) at the free throw line. The Lady Jackets also owned a 52-45 edge in rebounds, scored 40 points in the paint, and forced 26 turnovers which led to 23 points.
Dallas Christian (1-5) converted just 25 percent (19 of 76) of its field goal attempts, 22 percent (9 of 40) of its treys, and 58 percent (11 of 19) of its free throws. Kierra Rivers scored a game-high 16 points for DCC.
“I liked that we had four consecutive quarters of keeping somebody under 20 points, we haven’t done that in a while,” Denson said. “Defensively I liked our intensity and different defenses, how we reacted and how we flew around.”
Clinging to a 10-9 lead with 4:46 left in the first quarter, the Lady Jackets tallied 13 of the final 18 points to open a 23-14 lead. In front 17-14 at the 1:56 mark, Garcia and Greenwell drained treys to end the quarter for HPU.
The Lady Jackets extended the lead to 42-30 at halftime and 73-44 after three quarters.
“What I did not like was our start,” Denson said. “We had a slow start offensively as far as being in the rhythm and knowing what the team is going to bring, I thought they played a simple zone and we made it really crazy when all we had to do was slow down and take a deep breath and move the ball around. When we started doing that we started making shots.”
Howard Payne’s next game is on the road at Belhaven at 1 p.m. Saturday.
(Story by Derrick Stuckly)