The Capital City Lady Cavaliers hung around for the first 12 minutes.
But the St. Joseph Benton Lady Cardinals owned the remainder of the game.
“Our first half was good,” Capital City coach Ashley Agee said Wednesday night after the Lady Cavaliers dropped a 59-24 decision to the Lady Cardinals in the opening round of the Jefferson Bank Holiday Hoops Classic at Capital City High School.
“We did a good job shutting them down offensively, it was good defense against traditionally one of the best programs in the state.”
Both teams got off to a slow start offensively and the game was tied at 4 with 3:30 remaining in the first quarter. Benton then went on a 6-0 spurt in the next two minutes to take a 10-4 advantage and led 16-9 heading to the second quarter.
Jada Anderson’s layup with 4:54 left in the half pulled Capital City to within six at 19-13. But Benton was able to take advantage of some Capital City turnovers to rattle off six points in less than a minute to stretch its lead to 25-13.
“I knew we were going to have some turnovers, we have people handling the ball that aren’t used to it,” Agee said.
Benton closed the half on a 6-2 run to take a 31-15 advantage into intermission.
“That’s not a terrible half, we just struggled to score,” Agee said.
Those struggles carried over into the second half.
“We didn’t have the same effort and intensity in the second half we had in the first half,” Agee said. “We pride ourselves in playing hard all of the time, but I think we gave up on ourselves a little bit in the second half.”
The Lady Cavaliers were outscored 22-6 in the third quarter to trail 53-20. With a running clock, Benton held a 6-5 edge in the fourth quarter.
“Scoring six and five points in the second half isn’t going to get it done against anybody,” Agee said. “It doesn’t matter how well we play defensively, we have to put the ball in the hoop.”
Andrea Simmons finished with a game-high 24 points for Benton, going 9-of-10 from the field. Kelsey Johnson added 13 for the Lady Cardinals.
Benton (9-0) will play Jefferson City (5-3) in the semifinals at 5:30 p.m. today. Jefferson City topped Oxford, Miss., 56-37 in its first-round game Wednesday.
Anderson finished with nine points for Capital City (2-8), which will play Oxford (8-8) at 4 p.m. today.
“When we stick to the game plan, I think we can play with anybody,” Agee said. “But it takes four quarters of everybody doing that for that to happen and we didn’t do that tonight.”