*Abilene Cooper   Ballinger   Killeen Tournament   Odessa High  Odessa Permian  Midland Greenwood Tournament
Midland Lee  Lubbock Coronado  Midland Greenwood  Amarillo High  Lubbock High  Copperas Cove Tournament
Amarillo Tascosa  Midland High  Lubbock Monterey  Odessa High  Lubbock High  Midland Lee  Lubbock Coronado
                          Odessa Permian  Amarillo High  Midland High  Amarillo Tascosa  Lubbock Monterey

Central girls win basketball season opener

Mercedes Lopez showed her toughness Friday night, leading the Central High School girls basketball team to a hard-fought 45-43 season-opening overtime victory against Abilene Cooper at the Central gym.

With 4:24 remaining in a tight ball game, the Lady Cats' junior point guard Mercedes Lopez took a hard foul while driving to the basket.
The way she was running the floor, it looked like a Central victory was in jeopardy, but Lopez shook off the hard hit and nailed a game-clinching 3-pointer with 1:33 to play. That gave the Lady Cats a 44-43 advantage. Lopez later made one of two free throws in the final seconds to seal the win.

"When I got hit, it tingled my whole body," said Lopez, who scored 11 points.

The Lady Cats led by as much as 11 points (31-20) early in the third quarter, and it looked like they might run away with a win.

But the Lady Cougars (0-2), led by Hailey Smith's 13 points, took advantage of some bad shooting by Central and eventually forced the game into overtime.

"I was scared for a minute, but I have confidence in my team because we're quick," Lopez said. "Then we got a steal and that brought back our confidence. I just went up the court and handled the ball and gave it to our post players. That's all we've got to do is play hard every game."

Post Nailiah Jernigan had a game-high 17 points for the Lady Cats, and she gave Cooper fits all night inside the paint.

"I have a lot of faith in her," Lopez said of Jernigan. "We've been playing together since the fourth grade. I think we did real good and I think we're going to have a good season now."

Central coach Jan Wakefield was proud of her team for not getting flustered down the stretch.

"We've talked about one of our strengths is we're going to get after you and be scrappy," Wakefield said. "And I think everybody got to see some of that tonight. They're always a well-coached team.

"(Cooper coach) Kevin Long does a great job. We knew that it was going to be a tough battle. They hit some tough shots, and we had a few that we needed to make that didn't go in, and that kind of gave them the momentum. That's what I was most proud of was that we kept our composure. We kept executing and we really played well as a team."

Long was naturally disappointed his team couldn't finish off the comeback, but he was pleased with the effort.

"The situations that we were in tonight are going to help us down the road," the Cooper coach said. "There in regulation, I had a play set up with 9 seconds left, and I had an inexperienced guard shoot the ball with 3 seconds left, so that's a learning point right there. Hopefully we'll never do that again. In another situation, we had a lead and we had a guard jack up a 3, which was ill-advised. And we've learned something from that, hopefully.

"I'm disappointed that we lost, but it was a good game."

Central girls 45, Abilene Cooper 43 (OT)