The Weatherford Lady Coyotes took advantage of 26 first-half turnovers by TC to roll to a 43-19 halftime lead and parlay that into an 82-66 victory at TC gym.
The loss for the Lady Leopards puts them at 12-8 on the year and 5-3 in Northern Texas Junior College Athletic Conference play. Weatherford improved to 14-8, 6-2.
It was Weatherford’s game from the start, as the Lady Coyotes full-court press forced three consecutive Temple turnovers to start the game, and pushed them to a quick 6-0 lead. They had upped that to nine, before Rachael Rivera slowed the bleeding by knocking in a pair of free throws and Christy Johnson added a basket shortly after to close the gap to five. But the Lady Leopards would never get that close again.
“Weatherford has the best defense we have seen all year,” Temple coach Kim Sebek said. “They are known for their full-court aggressive defense, but I thought we’d be able to play better against it.”
Playing a highly-physical game, the Lady Coyotes aggresively went after TC and got Johnson in early foul trouble, forcing Temple’s top scorer and rebounder to watch most of the first half from the bench with just two points.
Through much of the first half, Sebek looked for a lineup that could penetrate the Weatherford defense, but nothing seemed to work, and the lineups that had some success on offense did struggled on defense.
But the second half told a different story, as Temple was able to hold its own against the more talented Lady Coyotes, but still failed to make a noticeable dent in the lead.
But with 9:47 left the Lady Coyotes hit a basket to go up by 32 and the Lady Leopards decided to try and keep a little pride.
Temple cut the lead to 21, off some free throws and a Rivera 3-pointer, before Weatherford built it back up to 27.
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