Wylie girls beat Cooper

By MARK WILSON / Staff Writer

The Wylie girls basketball team outscored Cooper 17-2 in the first seven minutes of the third quarter on the way to a 56-33 victory in the season opener for both teams Tuesday night at Cougar Gym.

The Lady Bulldogs got a game-high 18 points from Stephanie Anders, and Meredith Ripley scored eight of her 11 in the second quarter as Wylie took a 30-18 halftime lead.

"I thought for a first game, we executed offensively pretty well," Wylie head coach Randy Courtney said. "I thought we missed some easy baskets throughout the game that will hurt us in the future, if we don't start putting them down. I thought we did a better job on the boards than we did all last year. We started off the year blocking out."

Courtney was pleased with the advantage his Lady Bulldogs had on the boards, and pointed to his team's improved strength.

"Starting last spring we hit the weight room, and I think that really helped us out," Courtney said.

Cooper was led in scoring by Melissa Ames with eight points and Tamara Hart with seven.

A lack of blocking out - along with poor shooting around the basket - were the biggest concerns for Cooper head coach Kirk Ellis.

"We didn't block out and we missed about a dozen two-foot shots," Ellis said. "We've been working on blocking out for three weeks, every day. We're going to have to get better at that if we expect to compete.

"Our press worked well in the second quarter. We just couldn't finish out the shot off the steal. In a lot of cases we executed on offense."

Of Cooper's 18 first-half points, 11 came from the free-throw line.

Even though the Lady Bulldogs extended their lead to 27 points twice in the second half (47-20 with 1:27 left in the third quarter and 54-27 with 3:27 to go in the fourth), Ellis was mostly pleased with his team's effort overall.

"I wasn't disappointed at the way we competed," Ellis said. "In the second half, there wasn't a lot of quit in us. We continued to hustle, except we couldn't get the job done rebounding."

Cooper led twice in the early going, but Wylie took over the lead for good with 4:16 left in the opening quarter, at 4-3.

That sparked Wylie to an 11-1 run that put the Lady Bulldogs up 13-4, capped by a 3-point bucket from Kara Frazier with 1:06 remaining in the first quarter.

The Wylie girls game at Abilene High that had been scheduled for this Friday has been changed to Saturday. The varsity is set to start at 7 p.m. The junior varsity will be at 5:30 p.m.

The CHS girls will be competing in the Lady Prairie Classic in Grand Prairie Thursday through Saturday. The first game for the Lady Cougars will be against Haltom at 5:30 p.m. Thursday.

Girls

WYLIE (56) - Kara Frazier 2 0-0 5, Amanda Wright 0 0-0 0, Jessica Carnes 1 0-0 2, Mandy Stark 3 0-1 6, Lacy Weeks 0 1-1 1, Kelly Foster 1 0-0 2, Kendra Deberry 1 2-5 5, Erika Wilson 0 0-0 0, Mallory Cross 1 0-0 2, Carrie Naylor 2 0-0 4, Meredith Ripley 4 3-4 11, Stephanie Anders 8 0-0 19, Totals 23 6-11 56.

COOPER (33) - Courtney Brooks 1 0-0 2, Melissa Ames 3 0-0 8, Dara Welch 0 1-2 1, Amanda Partin 1 0-0 2, Tamara Hart 2 1-3 7, Kim Golson 0 5-7 5, Lauron Wallace 0 0-0 0, Robin Padgett 1 1-2 3, Ida Ridgeway 1 1-3 3, Totals 9 9-17 33.

Wylie ...13...17...17...9 - 56

Cooper ...7...11...6...9 - 33

3-point goals - Wylie 3 (Frazier 1, Anders 2); CHS 2 (Hart). Fouls - Wylie 18, CHS 12. Fouled out - Carnes. Technicals &emdash; none.

Records - Wylie 1-0; CHS 0-1.

JV score - Wylie 64, CHS 27.