Lady Indians defeat East Central 85-65

Lady Indians defeat East Central 85-65
Adam Gore/LetsGoICC.com

FULTON, MS – The Itawamba Community College Lady Indians rebounded from their season-opening loss with an 85-65 win over East Central Community College in the season debut of the defending Mississippi Association of Community and Junior Colleges (MACJC) champions.

Sophomore guard Ty-Nita Baker (Houston) scored a game-high 33 points and grabbed a season-high 11 rebounds for her first double-double of the season.

"It feels good getting that first win off your back," said 2012 MACJC Women's Coach of the Year Nanci Gray. "Ty-Nita did a great job stepping up not only as a scorer, but also as a leader. We are going to need her to do a lot more of that this season both on and off the court."

Freshman guard Latoya Collins (Jackson) came off the bench to score a season-high 22 points and collected 6 rebounds.

"We knew that Latoya had a lot of potential coming into the season," Gray commented. "We just weren't sure how long it would take her to adjust to the collegiate level of play and hopefully tonight gave her the confidence she needed to be one of the top players in our league."

Baker, freshman point guard Leslie Robinson (Belmont) and sophomore guard Ayanna Lynn (Indianola) dished out a team high five assists in the win.

"I thought we moved the ball a lot better tonight," Gray commented on the 20 assists on the night. "We really focused on moving without the ball instead of standing around waiting on the ball to come to us in practice. I thought Leslie and Ayanna did a great job running the offense by knowing when to push the tempo and when to slow it down."

Robinson scored 6 and Lynn added 5 for the Lady Indians.

ICC forced East Central to commit 27 turnovers, including 11 steals, while limited themselves to nine turnovers on the night.

"We played with a lot of intensity of defense," Gray. "It caused a lot of problems for East Central, but it also created a lot of easy scoring opportunities with transition points that helped up open up the game a little more in the second half."

One of the major concerns for Coach Gray was a 53-34 rebounding edge East Central held over the Lady Indians.

"It's hard replacing players like Jameika Hoskins and Mookie Bonner that averaged double-digit rebounds every night, but we are going to have to work harder on getting the girls that have that mentality to go get the ball when it comes off the boards," Gray.

Jakela Johnson paced East Central with 25 points and 10 rebounds while Tyneisa Mickens added 13 and Jaianah Matthew scored 10 in the loss.