Robert Cessna
The hard-luck Montgomery Lady Bears kept their playoff hopes alive and put a dent in College Station's district title aspirations with a 46-33 victory in District 17-5A play Friday night at Cougar Gym.
College Station's Tearra Burleson hit a 3-pointer for a 3-2 lead for the Lady Cougars, but Montgomery scored the next 17 points to emphatically put an end to a three-game losing streak. College Station had no answer for Montgomery power forward Janessa Tennison, who had 19 points and 14 rebounds, both game-high efforts. The 5-foot-11 power forward ruled the lane and hit 3 of 8 of 3-pointers, moving deftly inside or out. Tennison had a driving layup that capped four straight baskets to give the Lady Bears a 14-3 lead, forcing College Station to take a timeout. Montgomery senior guard Keelie Henneke in the surge had a pair of 3-pointers, her only baskets of the game, which sandwiched a 3 by Tennison.
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Montgomery (20-9, 3-5), which lost the last three games by a combined eight points, held its composure in the second half when the Lady Cougars (22-9, 5-3) managed to get the deficit to single digits, but never close.
"I just think we played a complete game this time," Montgomery coach Kelly Savoy said. "We've had some tough luck. We've lost some very close games. We can't blame anybody for ourselves. We have some breakdowns in each of those games. And tonight, it was just more of a complete start to finish effort, and kids were more focused and executed what we talked about in practice, and we put it all together."
That was just the opposite for College Station, which struggled mightily on offense, hitting only 12 of 55 shots (21.2%).
"We didn't shoot," CS head coach Shawnte' Goff said. "We just didn't shoot, we haven't been shooting well. We just gotta get better."
Montgomery hitting 5 of 7 shots to start the game was the anomaly in the first half as other than that the teams would have had a rough time winning a game of I-T, let alone H-O-R-S-E. College Station missed 13 of its first 14 field goals. Montgomery cooled off after the hot start, missing 17 of its next 18 shots, but College Station couldn't take advantage by making only 2 of 14 shots in the second quarter. The Lady Cougars did have the last two baskets of the half as Taylor Cornehl had a layup and fellow sophomore DeAnna Cole added a 3-pointer. The 5-0 run whittled Montgomery's halftime advantage to 19-8.
Shooting got much better in the third quarter as College Station more than tripled the points it had in the first half by hitting 7 of 14 field goals, but Montgomery kept a comfortable lead by hitting 6 of 11, almost doubling its halftime score. The Lady Bears' lead crested at 36-19 when freshman point guard Briley Esnard hit a baseline 3-pointer with 1:52 left on the heels of her scoring a tough, contested layup.
College Station showed signs of life in the final 102 seconds of the third quarter, going on an 8-1 run. Burleson and twin sister Toree both hit 3s and Tearra added a steal and score just ahead of the buzzer. Montgomery's hiccup allowed Consol to pull within 37-27 entering the final quarter.
College Station senior power forward Rita Shuman scored the first points of the fourth quarter to pull the Lady Cougars within 37-29. Tennison answered with a 3-pointer and the Lady Cougars went cold again, missing several shots and going only 1 of 4 at the free-throw line. Montgomery did a good job running clock, getting a pair of layups in the process by Tennison.
Montgomery 46, College Station 33
Numbers after name are field goals made-attempted, free throws made-attempted, rebounds, fouls and points
MONTGOMERY (20-9, 3-5 in 17-5A) - Shaylee Lane 1-2 0-0 2 1 2; Peyton Harts 1-9 1-2 6 1 3; Briley Esnard 5-6 3-4 6 3 16; Keelie Hennecke 2-3 0-0 5 0 6; Camryn Savoy 0-5 0-0 3 1 0; Averi Szynal 0-5 0-0 3 1 0; Janessa Tennison: 7-14 2-2 14 2 19. Totals: 16-44 6-8 39 9 46
COLLEGE STATION (22-9, 5-3) - Taylor Cornehl 2-8 0-0 3 1 5; DeAnna Cole 1-10 2-6 3 1 5; Ja'mya Johnson 1-8 0-2 4 3 2; Rita Shuman 1-2 0-0 10 2 2; Camille Johnson 0-5 0-0 0 2 0; Tearra Burleson 6-16 0-0 0 1 16; Toree Burleson 1-6 0-0 1 0 3; Shelby Gunter 0-0 0-0 1 0 0. Totals: 12-55 2-8 22 10 33.
Montgomery;14;5;18;9; - 46
College Station;3;5;19;6; - 33
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