But when Shondria Combs’ 3-point attempt fell short with less than 5 seconds to play, the Lady Leopards fell short as well as Weatherford held on for a 63-58 win at TC Gym.
“It was a hard-fought battle, but we just came up on the short end tonight,” Temple coach Kim Sebek said. “Weatherford is a good team and we played them hard and we played them short-handed. We just came up short.”
The two teams fought a brilliant battle to the end. At one point midway through the first half, Temple (11-11, 5-4 in Northern Texas Junior College Athletic Conference play) held a nine-point lead before the Lady Coyotes (14-5, 8-1) grabbed a nine-point lead midway through the second.
But as Weatherford had done in the first half, Temple rallied in the second half and took a 52-51 lead with seven minutes to play.
From there it was a back-and-forth battle with the defenses winning most of it. Two free throws by Temple High product Combs with 2:24 to play gave Temple its final lead at 58-57.
Weatherford’s Monique Burnham answered with two free throws to give the Lady Coyotes a 59-58 lead with about one minute to play before an untimely error hurt Temple.
Guard Andrea Johnson mishandled a pass from Combs. Johnson recovered, but by the time she did Johnson was well guarded and her attempt to pass back to Combs fell into the hands of Weatherford’s Tanesha Wilkins.
Weatherford ran down the play clock until Ashley Harrell finally drained a shot in heavy traffic, giving the Lady Coyotes a 3-point lead with 25 seconds to play.
“Harrell hit a tough shot there at the end with defense all over her,” Sebek added.
After a timeout, the Lady Leopards called for a play to try to find Johnson for an open 3. Instead, Weatherford’s defense was able to work around the picks and Combs tried the 3 herself just as Johnson finally got open. The shot was on target but bounced out after the back end of the ball ricocheted off the front end of the rim. Wilkins drew a foul on the rebound to seal the victory with 3.9 seconds to play.
“You can look back and say the turnover at the end there cost us the game,” Sebek said. “It was tough to lose the ball toward the end of the game, but it just doesn’t boil down to that one play. We became tentative a bit on offense.”
Wilkins finished with a game-high 21 points for the Lady Coyotes.
Mareta Bailey led Temple with 16 points and Combs added 14.
But Temple’s offensive production was hindered by the loss of reserve point guard Kristel Munson, who missed her third straight game with an injury, and Alex Pinney, who was out with an illness. Pinney, who had been averaging 11.8 points per game and has hit 47.3 percent of her 3-pointers, had been serving as Combs’ backup with Munson out. Instead, Combs played the entire game and Sebek had to rotate Brittany Bryant, Johnson and forward Julisa Mitchell.
The combination worked well for most of the game, but as Weatherford pressed to try and catch up, the Lady Leopards struggled to keep up. At one point late in the game, Bryant pulled herself from the game for several minutes complaining of leg cramps.
“It hurts not having a backup point guard,” Sebek said. “Shondria played 40 minutes and she’s been doing what I’ve asked her to do. It was tough on (Johnson) and tough on Brittany to play the amount of minutes they played at the intensity level the game was played at.”
And it hurt not having Pinney’s perimeter shooting as Temple made only one of 16 3-pointers.
“It was a tough one to lose at home,” Sebek concluded. “But it makes me believe that they stepped up after the loss to Collin and are playing where we need to be playing right now. I wasn’t sure how we’d respond after the Collin game but I thought we gave a good effort.
“Now with four losses it will be difficult to win conference, but we have to focus on a goal of being in the top four. And that means we have to take care of our business.”
Temple will be at Hill on Saturday. The next home game will be Feb. 16 at 2 p.m. against Cisco.
mhood@temple-telegram.com
