Losing basketball games doesn’t set well with the Central High School Lady Raiders.
Warren County learned that the hard way Thursday night at Joe Frank Patch Memorial Gymnasium in Manchester.
Bella Vinson stroked 27 points through the net and two other Lady Raiders reached double figures in a 66-22 blowout of the visiting Lady Pioneers. The win comes after the Lady Raiders’ first loss of the season Tuesday night against Blackman.
“We had our first loss of the season [and we talked about] how do you respond,” said CHS head coach Joe Pat Cope during his postgame press conference with Thunder Radio. “We talked at halftime because we were upset giving up 12 points [tonight]. We only gave up 10 in the second half and that’s playing everybody. The girls played hard.”
Vinson ripped off 27 points to lead the way for Coffee County, including three 3-pointers.
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Early on it was Chloe Gannon dominating in the paint. The sophomore post finished with 16 points on the night and helped Coffee County build an 18-6 first quarter lead as CHS focused on the post.
“We just put something in where we were using all three – Bella, Chloe and Elli (Chumley) in the post at the same time tonight,” explained Cope.
Sophomore point guard Jalie Ruehling got hot in the second half and hit three 3-pointers to finish with 14 points.
Alivia Reel had her midrange jumpshot going to finish with 6. Emma Fulks added 3 points for Coffee County.
Erica Cantrell had six points for Warren County.
“We still got a long way to go in our zone rotation,” added Cope. “We should hold that team under 10 points if we are going to play at Blackman’s level. And we can.”
Warren County falls to 3-2 with the loss.
The Lady Raiders are now 5-1 on the season and will play at Goodpasture Saturday at 4:30 p.m. You can hear that game live on Thunder Radio (107.9 FM, 106.7 FM, 1320 AM, Manchester Go smartphone app, thunder1320.com, and on Amazon Alexa: “Alexa, play Thunder Radio.”)
