©2009 NPT PHOTO BY SETH BUTLER

Lady Red senior Jalese Pruitt attempts a shot against
the defense of Lenoir City's Chelsey Moore in Tuesday's victory.
Pruitt scored 11 points off the bench and pulled down
eight rebounds in the winning effort.

LENOIR CITY-The opening night of the 2009-10 basketball season provided the Cocke County Lady Red a lot of positives.

It also provided them a lot to work on.

Cocke County raced out to a 34-7 lead over Lenoir City midway through the third quarter as their offense operated efficiently throughout most of the evening. As quickly as they built their lead, it crumbled into a 12-point edge at the mid-point of the fourth quarter.

Cocke County recovered from the Lady Panthers rally to pull away for a 56-37 victory in their first of two Hall of Champions games.

Lady Red senior Shannon Depew led Cocke County with a game-high 14 points and 17 rebounds, picking up from her junior season in which she averaged a double-double.

"Overall, I'm happy with our chemistry, I'm happy with our locker room attitude, and I believe this team can get better," Cocke County coach Wade Wester said. "That's what we are looking for - to find things we didn't do well and grow from that."

Cocke County (1-0) worked efficiently on the offensive end in the game, running an offense and focused on getting the ball inside. The Lady Red finished the game with 13 assists, which was a result of their strategy to work the basketball and get it into the paint against a much smaller Lady Panthers team.

"We knew that we were bigger than them, so we tried to give it to Allie (Sprouse) and JJ (Jalese Pruitt) and get the ball in the paint and bang around, and get into a rhythm and to get our chemistry better," Depew said. "We've been working on calming down and getting ourselves settled instead of fast breaking all the time.

"Since this was a little bit of a smaller team, we tried to just run our plays and get things settled and move the ball around," Depew said.

Cocke County got 34 points from their three post players, Depew, Sprouse and Pruitt, and another 10 points from guard Kendra Walker who penetrated to the basket throughout much of the game.

While Cocke County's offense erupted for a 27-7 lead at halftime, their defense plagued Lenoir City for much of the half. The Lady Panthers were held without a point in the second quarter as part of a 12:30 scoreless streak that allowed Cocke County to run their lead to a 27-point margin midway through the third quarter.

The large lead had Wester going to his bench to attempt to build depth for a team that lost a pair of senior starters and is attempting to gain experience at the guard position to back up starters Morgan Buda and Jayla Lane.

"We had some girls that came off the bench that gave us some good quality minutes and we didn't lose a beat when they came in," Wester said "They came in and handled the ball and did the right things.

"I would like to play some girls some more," Wester said. "I can't play the starters as much as I did tonight and expect to be competitive. Everyone is going to have to step up, including that second group coming in."

However, Lenoir City closed the gap to 40-18 at the end of the third quarter after hitting several shots and then closed the gap quickly as a full-court pressure defense forced the Lady Red into nine turnovers in the first five minutes of the final quarter.

"When we beat the press, we played into their hands and we played fast when we should've slowed it down," Wester said. "It was a little bit of my fault because I'm always teaching attack, and when you teach attack that happens sometimes."

Cocke County however recovered with a pair of big scores by Walker and Pruitt and finally began to solve the pressure for easy fast break lay-ups.

Wester said the key to surviving the run was his team not panicking and maintaining their composure.

"We kept our composure and no one was pointing fingers, everybody is talking to each other and telling them that they'll do their job," Wester said.

Depew agreed with her coach's assessment that communication made the big difference in surviving the rally by the Lady Panthers.

"We can talk to each other and calm each other down when they are on a run, and make sure we can get things back to playing our game, instead of their game," Depew said.

Cocke County (56): Shannon Depew 14, Jalese Pruitt 11, Kendra Walker 10, Allie Sprouse 9, Morgan Buda 7, Cidney Ball 2, Jayla Lane 1.

Lenoir City (37): Chelsey Moore 10, Tyler Powers 10, Kara Steil 9, Catherine Hunley 7, Kristi Brackett 1.

CCHS: 23/51 FG (45.1%), 9/16 FT (56.3%), 1/2 3-PT FG (50.0%), 46 RBS, 19 TO.

LCHS: 14/47 FG (29.8%), 5/10 FT (50.0%), 4/20 3-PT FG (20.0%), 18 RBS, 14 TO.