1 week ago
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NEW ALBANY – Tupelo's girls have improved over the course of the season, but Tuesday’s loss to Biloxi showed them how far they still have to go.
Tupelo hung around, but Biloxi came away with a 56-46 win on the second day of the Robertson’s Sportswear Lady Challenge. Zaniya Johnson led Biloxi with 17 points and 10 rebounds.
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“I was just telling the locker room I felt like where we came from early November to the end of 2025 here, we’ve definitely grown as a team,” Tupelo head coach Matt Justice said. “We’ve gotten better and better each week. We’ve got three more months, so we just want to continue to get better and better and better and put ourselves in position to be right there with everybody else.”
Tupelo (9-5) struggled to find answers for Johnson, the Indians’ 6-foot-4 star. The Golden Wave didn’t have the size to measure up to her, and Tupelo had issues trying to stop her and rebound. Even when Tupelo double-teamed Johnson, that created open looks for her teammates.
“The double teams, I feel like that opened teammates up a little more. … I feel like I opened up the court a little bit more,” Johnson said.
“We’ve got to do a better job of getting the ball to her,” Biloxi head coach Devin Hill said. “She’s working her butt off, sealing and dealing, fighting through double teams and stuff. When we get openings, we don’t want to focus on that. We want to play.”
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Biloxi (15-1) led 33-27 at halftime and began to pull away to start the second half. The Indians opened the third quarter with a 14-3 run to take a decisive 47-30 lead.
Tupelo trimmed the deficit to 10 heading into the fourth quarter and then whittled it down further to just six points. But the Golden Wave couldn’t find enough points to pull off the comeback.
“Good teams respond, and they put us in positions of adversity all day today,” Justice said. “I felt like we responded in all those. I think in the fourth quarter, the difference was we got the stops we needed. We just couldn’t create what we needed on offense. We had some costly turnovers and some missed opportunities at the end to get within two or three points right there in the fourth quarter.”
Three-Pointers
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Turning Point: Biloxi took a 47-30 lead in the third quarter and never looked back.
Point Maker: Johnson finished the game with 17 points for Biloxi.
Talking Point: "I feel like our team has just continued to grow. Some of the younger ones that we have that started the season, my freshmen and sophomores, are starting to mature a little bit, and we got them some game experience. These games right here kind of help them grow up and become better.” – Justice
English (US) ·