By Johnny Sanders
Sports Editor
Tuesday night, the Lady Blue Devils brought a 4-game winning streak into the front yard of the rival St. Clair County Lady Saints gym and came away with a stunning loss. “I don’t want to take anything away from St. Clair because they played a fantastic ball game,” said Becca Davis, head coach of the Lady Devils, “but I don’t know that we could play much worse than what we did.”
Typically, in past games, Moody’s girls have had one big scoring quarter that the opponent could not overcome, but that would not be the case on this occasion as the Saints defense held them in check all night. The first quarter saw only Tarryn Woodall and Kendall Stephens score from the floor, paired with free throws from Emma Kile and Ragan Hodges. The defense didn’t let things get too crazy as St. Clair scored just 13 points to end the quarter 13-7 Saints.
The second quarter would be much of the same. Moody struggled to get anything going on the offensive side of the ball but playing winning defense. Tori Pyles would get in on the scoring for the Devils but again, they would find themselves in single digits for the quarter and head into the half down 24-16.
Stephens put up 6 of the 8 points Moody had in the third quarter (Woodall scored the other 2) but St. Clair found a spark and put up 15 to put the Saints up 39-24 going into the final frame.
Pyles would do her best in the final quarter to bring her team back, but to no avail. She scored 8 of her 13 points in the fourth while only Woodall (2 points) and Kile (1 point) would be able to contribute, leading to a final score of 47-35 Saints.
Pyles led Moody with 13 points, followed by Woodall with 9 and Stephens with 8.
“There were 3 things I told them we had to do to win. That was, not turn the ball over on the press, make our easy shots, and not get in foul trouble. We did all 3 of those things and we deserved to lose,” said Davis.
Moody is now 5-4 (1-1 in the region) and will play their third consecutive area rival on Friday night as 8-2 Springville visits.