Jackson Progress-Argus

Sophomore point guard, Latara Grier, rises up for a shot as she drives to the basket in the third quarter of Jackson’s 41-39 loss to Eagle’s Landing High School.

Jackson — The Jackson High School girls basketball team dropped its fourth-consecutive game to open the season Friday against Eagle’s Landing High School at home, but coach Corey Johnson isn’t losing hope.

Johnson said after the game that he was proud of the girls’ efforts to keep battling back, even after trailing by more than 8 points for large portions of the game.

The season hasn’t been very smooth thus far for the Lady Red Devils, losing back-to-back games against Monticello High School as well as tilts against Eagle’s Landing and Drew High School to open the season.

Johnson said he has a young team that is going to have some growing pains throughout the year, but his goal is to improve over the course of the season, and hopefully peak in February when the games matter the most.

“Our goal is to steadily get better every game,” said Johnson. “Every time we step on the court, we want to get better. And, we want to be able to position ourselves to be playing our best ball come February. Barring any injuries, we are going to be in good shape if we keep improving.”

To be able to accomplish those goals, Johnson said he is going to rely heavily on sophomore Latara Grier and junior Peaches Barr to lead the team on and off the court.

“I put a lot of pressure on [Grier],” said Johnson. “We need her to bring the ball down the court and to get us set up in our offense and to be our point guard. There’s a lot of pressure there.

“We’re also going to ride Peaches Barr,” said Johnson. “She’s our post-slash-swing player. We are going to ride her, and hopefully she can do some big things for us this year.”

Even though the most recent result wasn’t ideal for Jackson, the team seemed to be moving in the right direction after nearly stunning the Lady Golden Eagles, narrowly losing 41-39.

After a back-and-forth first quarter, Eagle’s Landing was able to go on an 11-5 run in the final 5:08 in the half to take an 8-point lead into halftime. The Golden Eagles continued in the third, going on an 8-3 run during the first 3:40 of the third quarter, extending their lead to 13 points. From there, Jackson’s coach Johnson decided to take some gambles defensively by extending his defense and pressuring Eagle’s Landing as soon as they took the ball over the halfway line. For the most part, the gamble paid off.

The Lady Red Devils immediately began to force Eagle’s Landing into making mistakes and did not allow a point for the remainder of the quarter.

“We've worked on the press in practice. We really wanted to pressure the ball, and we did a good job pressuring them,” said Johnson after the game. “At times, we got caught out of position and gave up the easy lay-up. The risk that comes with the way we play defense is that when we pressure, if they are able to find the open pass, we are going to give up open shots. But, as you can see, we forced more turnovers than we gave up lay-ups.”

Jackson used its defensive pressure to fastbreak against the opposition, and the game opened up drastically. What was a defensive, plodding game in the first half turned into an up-tempo affair late, a style that favored Jackson’s need for points.

In the end though, it was Jackson’s youth and inexperience that sealed its fate. After cutting the lead to a mere 2 points with less than 20 seconds remaining, the Lady Red Devils did not foul Eagle’s Landing to stop the clock, despite Johnson’s vocal instructions from the sideline.

“Like I've said, we're still young, and we still have to work on things like fouling at the end [of the game] to put them on the free throw line,” said Johnson. “But I'm so proud of the girls. They were playing hard. We had two foul out, and the reason was because they were laying it on the line, doing everything in their power to try to bring home a win. That's all you can ask.”