Central powers through

In just 24 hours, Central's hopes of becoming the county's top team were fading fast.

On Monday night, the Lady Bears failed in their bid to hand Nature Coast its first defeat in 40 all-time county games, opening the season with a 59-52 loss to the Lady Sharks.

Through the better part of three quarters in Tuesday night's contest at Hernando, Central was on pace to suffer a similar fate at the hands of Jasmire Brown and the host Lady Leopards in their season opener.

But a pair of key three-pointers by McKenzie Burns in the final minute of the third tied things up, and Raqurra Ishmar helped power the Lady Bears to a 52-42 victory.

"We definitely did not want to go down 0-2," Central Head Coach Penny Gressick said. "Last night was going back-and-forth and this one felt the same way and the exact same thing was happening.

"Fortunately we made key buckets down the stretch and hit free throws."

Brown dominates early

Across the first three periods, the Lady Bears had no answer for Brown. The senior small forward recorded 25 points, 10 steals and eight rebounds.

But she didn't have a field goal in the fourth quarter, limited to three made free throws.

"The biggest momentum-turner was when we went man-to-man," Gressick said of her defense. "(Brown) can slash all over the court and we weren't seeing it well enough to defend it. So we went man in the fourth quarter."

Ishmar took over the responsibility of defending Brown, one of the many areas where she contributed to her team's triumph.

The 5-foot-8 junior, who missed the entire 2008-09 campaign because of a torn anterior cruciate ligament, had 14 points, 20 rebounds, three steals and two blocked shots.

With less than two minutes remaining in the game, she stole the ball and went coast-to-coast for a layup, opening up a 45-39 advantage to essentially seal the win.

"I played horrible," Ishmar said. "I felt like I was failing my team and the only thing I could do was get rebounds and shoot free throws.

"I prayed (against Brown). She's fast and she's a threat. I felt like I wasn't fast enough to guard her, so I needed my team a lot."

As for Burns, the junior point guard initially had trouble facing pressure from the longer Brown at halfcourt.

That contributed to Central's 35 turnovers, but she redeemed herself by scoring 14 of her team-best 19 points in the second half, knocking down four shots from beyond the arc.

The first two treys came in the last 40 seconds of the third quarter, tying the score at 32. Gressick took advantage of the fact that Hernando wasn't guarding the wing on inbounds plays under the basket.

"That's not even the way that play goes," Gressick said. "I rotated people to get it to Burns on the baseline and I told her to shoot with confidence and she hit it."

The Lady Bears also received 11 points, 15 boards and four steals from Tikiera Relaford, getting multiple standout performances to spoil Kevin Bittinger's debut as head coach of the Lady Leopards.

"We knew they were a physical team that could rebound," said Bittinger, whose squad got out-rebounded 57-44. "We executed our game plan, not perfectly, but I thought we kind of got in position for a lot of rebounds and it seemed like we couldn't grab some.

"It's a tough one I'm not going to lie. I think we're a better team than we showed. We're the type of team that has to score as a team and we didn't do that tonight. You got to hit open shots, you got to hit layups and we didn't."

CENTRAL 52, HERNANDO 42
Qtr. Scoring 1 2 3 4
Central 11 7 14 20 - 52
Hernando 14 8 10 10 - 42
Central (52): Brooks 2 0-2 4, Relaford 3 5-12 11, Ishmar 4 6-10, 14, Burns 7 1-7 19, McKenzie 1 2-2 4, R. Lynch 0, S. Lynch 0, Jackson 0. Totals 17 14-33 52.
Hernando (42): Brown 10 5-10 25, Lawrence 2 1-3 5, Flowers 1 2-2 4, Liles 1 0-0 2, Jones 1 0-0 2, White 2 0-0 4, Kalina 0 0-2 0, Killingsworth 0 0-2 0, Dixon 0. Totals 17 8-19 42.
Three-point field goals: CEN 4 (Burns 4); HER 0.
Total fouls: CEN 15; HER 24.
Technical fouls: none.
Fouled out: Ishmar (CEN), Lawrence, Liles (HER).
Records: Central (1-1), Hernando (0-1).