GIRLS' BASKETBALL: Faulkner's critique may lead to more rebounding drills

By Ben Coley
Published in Sports on December 8, 2016 9:57 AM

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bcoley@newsargus.com

PIKEVILLE -- Every win isn't going to be a pretty one.

Some games, you can cruise.

Others are gritty, grind-out affairs that expose more flaws than you'd like.

Charles B. Aycock's 48-38 victory over North Lenoir on Wednesday night proved to be the latter. No spectacular moves, no up-and-down pace. Just a gutty triumph.

Golden Falcons' head coach Tangela Faulkner admitted that her team did not give its best performance.

"It just so happened that we had a lot of rebounds," Faulkner said. "We did that well, but we didn't run our offense well, and we didn't take the smartest shots. There's a lot we're going to work on from this game."

The Golden Falcons put an emphasis on driving to the basket and drawing shooting fouls -- in the first half, at least. In the first and second quarters combined, CBA tallied 17 attempts at the free throw line and made 13.

Trips to the charity stripe helped give CBA a 27-15 lead at halftime.

However, the Golden Falcons' effort appeared to waver in the second half. They attempted just seven free throws in the second half -- with only one try coming in the fourth quarter.

"We stopped drawing their body contact," Faulkner said. "We just started slowing it down and playing at their pace when we needed to play our half-court game, and we just weren't doing that. There's a whole lot we could've done better, but we'll take the win."

Rebounding became more of an issue, as well. Most of the frustration was caused by North Lenoir's Rahziah Hutchins, who grabbed a game-high 17 rebounds.

Hutchin's persistence on the offensive glass led Faulkner to repeatedly scream 'box out!' from across the court. North Lenoir finished with a 42-36 advantage in rebounds.

"We got a lot of rebounds," Faulkner said. "But it was the 1-3-1 zone that they were in that caused us to get a lot of rebounds. But not because we were putting our body on anybody."

Despite the rebounding issues, the Golden Falcons played with a double-digit advantage for the entire second half, mostly because of North Lenoir's 24 turnovers.

Tanika Powell led the Golden Falcons with 21 points and nine rebounds. Alexis Edmundson chipped in 10 points.

Since CBA has three games in four days this week, part of Faulkner's game plan was to constantly rotate players to give her starters rest. She said that may have been a partial reason for the rebounding problem, but it's not something she will accept going into Friday's home game against Rosewood.

"Our girls came in and did a great job of keeping the game going," Faulkner said. "We just gave too many second and third shots. More than I'm comfortable with. So we're going to work hard on that."