Slow start, but strong finish lets the Lady Falcons soar
Lady Falcon LaDaysha Bonaparte keeps the ball away from a Marlboro County player during a game Jan.10 in Darlington. Photo by Drake Horton
By Drake Horton, Contributing Writer
The Darlington Lady Falcons dominated the Marlboro County Lady Bulldogs January 10 at home, winning by an impressive margin of 70-41.
Despite being down by one point at the end of the first quarter, the Lady Falcons went into the half up 36-28 and completely took over in the second half.
“We kind of came out a little bit sluggish, but at the end of the day I tell them you can’t let teams hang around too long and we made a better approach in the second half,” said Darlington girls head coach Brad Knox after the game.
Up 51-35 at the end of the third quarter, Marlboro County scored the first five points of the fourth quarter before the Lady Falcons finished the game off on a 20-0 run, putting an exclamation point on an overall stellar performance in the second half.
“I’m very proud of my team in how they responded in the second half,” Knox said.
Leading the way for Darlington in scoring was Hope Richardson with 14 points, but instead of celebrating her team’s victory and her offensive performance she was instead talking about how this really good basketball team can become even better.
“We started off bad, but we picked it up,” Richardson said. “Moving forward we have to start in the first quarter.”
Starting the game off, Darlington jumped on Marlboro County quick, scoring the first seven points of the game and as each of the Lady Bulldogs shots clanked off of the iron it looked like this game could be over about as quick as it started.
Then out of nowhere the first jump shot for the Lady Bulldogs went down and it became contagious as Marlboro County hit jump shot after jump shot in the opening quarter including a controversial three-pointer at the buzzer that appeared to only happen due to a clock malfunction the officials did not see.
“They were making open shots so hats off to Marlboro County for that,” Knox said on the Lady Bulldogs exceptional shooting early in the game.
In the second quarter that jump shot began to cool down some and by the time the fourth quarter came around it was basically extinct as Darlington imposed its will on Marlboro County.
Other leading scorers in the game were Deja Turner, who finished with 10 points and Ty-Shae Harmon-Dubose, who had nine points.
The win wraps up Darlington non-conference schedule this season and the Lady Falcons have a 10-3 record heading into the region.
Weekly Recap
The Lady Falcons hit the court one other time this week, a road game Friday against the Crestwood Lady Knights.
It was Darlington’s opening region game and it was not how the Lady Falcons wanted to get their region scheduled started, losing 45-37.
Darlington is now 10-4 overall, 0-1 in the region.
