By Robert Wilson
Madison-Ridgeland Academy coach Stephen Force believes 6-foot junior guard Presley Hughes is the best defender he has had in his 29-year coaching career.
Hughes backed up Force’s great compliment by shutting down one of the hottest scorers in Mississippi Tuesday night.
Hughes’ assignment was to slow down Jackson Academy hot shooting junior guard Jayden Rhymes who had scored a combined 53 points against defending MAIS Overall Tournament champion East Rankin Academy and defending MAIS Class 6A state champion Jackson Prep over the past 10 days.
Hughes and her teammates keep Rhymes scoreless and MRA rolled to a 47-26 victory over JA in a battle between the only two teams with an undefeated Class 6A conference record before an estimated 750 at MRA’s Duease Hall in Madison.
MRA improved to 20-5 overall, 3-0 in league play and 13th straight win against MAIS teams. JA dropped to 14-4 and 2-1 in league play and broke a five-game winning streak.
It wasn’t just Hughes playing good defense, it was the entire MRA team. MRA limited JA to 20 percent shooting from the field for the game (8 of 40). The Lady Patriots also outrebounded the Lady Raiders 40-21.
MRA led 32-8 at halftime and by as much as 26 points. It was the least number of JA had scored all season, 15 points less than its previous low.
“Presley is 6-foot tall, and she can move her feet,” said Force, who has won 766 games in 29 seasons, 626 wins in 23 seasons at MRA, and three Overall championships. “She is the best defender I’ve ever had. And (MRA sophomore guard) Anna Morgan Anderson might be the second best. If they lock on you, you are done. Presley did a great job on Jayden and when Presley came out of the game, we moved Anna Morgan on her and she did a great job. It’s hard to get a shot off against those two. We have Presley, who is 6 foot and if a player gets past her, we have other tall players who can guard a player in the paint (6-1 senior Fallon Humphries, 5-11 Annie Toler, 5-11 Allie Redding and 6-5 Alyssa Dampier, daughter of former Mississippi State and NBA star and MRA boys basketball assistant coach Erick Dampier). It was a great defensive effort. We kept JA from getting from running some of their plays. We got into a defensive rhythm the way some teams get into an offensive rhythm. It was fun for me to watch as a coach. We put together a game plan and they executed it. We also had two or three hitting some shots. That’s a pretty good combo. Anna Morgan had 15 points in the first half. Allie, Annie, and Fallon controlled the boards.”
“All conference matchups are tough, and we knew this game would be the same,” said Hughes, daughter of former Jackson Prep and Mississippi State forward Whit Hughes, who was the sixth man on MSU’s Final Four team in 1996. “JA has been playing well and we knew it would be important to set the tone early with defense. That kind of effort on defense and rebounding can lead to a lot of success. I’m proud of how our team played and believe there’s room to get better. One thing I know is we’re going to keep working hard to reach our goals.”
The 5-8 Anderson – a member of the Tatum and Wade/Mississippi Scoreboard Preseason Metro Jackson Elite 11 Team – finished with a game-high 19 points and two steals. Redding had 10 points and nine rebounds. Toler had nine points and seven rebounds. Hughes had 4 assists, 2 steals and 2 blocked shots. Dampier had two blocked shots. Junior forward Margaret Ann Hollis had five rebounds and three assists in eight minutes off the bench.
MRA recognized JA coach Jan Sojourner, the third winningest girls basketball coach in Mississippi history who is retiring after this season, in a pregame ceremony with MRA head of school Termie Land, Force and MRA boys basketball coach Richard Duease (the winningest basketball coach in Mississippi history). It was the last time Sojourner would coach at MRA’s gym.
It was a game she would most likely like to forget.
JA, which had scored 70 points in its win over East Rankin and 64 in its win over Prep, had no answer for MRA Tuesday night.
“They were really wanting to make a point to us. They hit us right in the mouth and I don’t think we responded very well,” said Sojourner, who has won 1,047 games in 45 seasons, with 941 wins in 40 seasons at JA. She also has won 10 state championships and a record six Overall titles. “They have three 6 footers that they start then if they go with Dampier and she’s 6-5. The shortest is 5-8 (Anderson) and she’s their best shooter. You could see it with my girls. It changed their shot selection as far as when they wanted to shoot, the way they shot the ball, just everything. We didn’t do a good job of adjusting to that. We came out and our eyes were huge, like ‘what have you gotten us into Coach?’ We have to understand, you don’t even need to try to challenge them because they have enough length that if you try to challenge that, you aren’t going to get the call and that’s a wasted possession for us. If you aren’t able to score outside, you can’t win. We did a poor job of shooting. Their length rushed us on our shots and that made a difference. They just came out and played extremely well and guarded well. They had too many second-chance points. It was disappointing the way we played in the first half, but I was pleased with the second half. It would have been so easy to lay down and not battle back. I was proud of them.”
Junior guard Ella King had seven points and senior guard Aubrey Edmonson had six points for JA.
