The Greeneville girls could not keep up with Bearden on Monday afternoon in the Andrew Johnson Bank Ladies Classic and fell 85-57 in the tournament’s quarterfinals.
“Right now we are not ready to compete with a team with that kind of talent,” Greeneville coach Annette Watts said. “But there were good things. Matea Gray is the smallest thing on the floor, but she gave it everything she had. Julia (Woolsey) as a sophomore did really good job guarding a D-1 senior. I am proud that we played with intensity, but I just wish that I could keep five on the floor that played as hard they could all the time.”
The Lady Greene Devils will now be back in action on Tuesday at 4:30 p.m. against Albertville, Alabama.
“We have to do the things that we do when we come back tomorrow. We can’t revert back to things we did in middle school or at another school,” Watts said. “We have to do what Greeneville does. We have to execute our stuff. We need to learn from tonight, we can’t throw the ball away and we have to make them play defense.”
Greeneville hung tough in the early going on Monday and led 5-3 after Jordan Swatzell sank a three-pointer from the right wing.
Bearden scored eight points over the next minute with Natalya Hodge knocking down a step-back triple to put the Lady Bulldogs in front 11-5.
Bearden kept running the floor and Hodge converted a breakaway layup before Baylie Myers drained a trey in transition for an 18-8 lead.
Greeneville’s Brylee Tullock finished the first quarter with a two triples, but the six three-pointers the Lady Bulldogs knocked down gave them a 26-14 lead.
Riley Hunt started the second quarter by getting ahead of the defense for a layup, and another transition layup from Rainey stretched Bearden’s lead to 35-16 at the midway point of the second quarter.
Greeneville got six points from Maria Lyde in the quarter, but Bearden’s dynamic duo of Hodge and Rainey scored seven points each as the lead grew to 44-25 at halftime.
In the third quarter Greeneville got early three-pointers from Matea Gray and Swatzell as the margin narrowed to 50-35.
Bearden then went on a 10-2 run to take a 60-37 lead. In the final 42 seconds an offensive rebound by Greeneville’s Julia Woolsey set up Tullock for a midrange jumper, and Lyde used another offensive board to close the gap to 63-43.
The Lady Bulldogs scored the first nine points of the fourth quarter, capped by Hodge connecting from deep. Bearden’s biggest lead was 83-51 with 1:33 left to play when Myers nailed the team’s 10th triple of the evening.
Hodge led Bearden with 31 points on Monday while Rainey put in 23 points.
For Greeneville Tullock finished with 16 points and 10 rebounds, Lyde had 16 points and Gray scored 11.
