BY DAVID FOLSE II

Sports Editor

In one of the most impressive performance on the young season in the entire local area, East St. John had no trouble disposing of the Lady Trojans of Central Lafourche 50-13 Tuesday night at ESJ.

Nikita Hutchinson led the Lady Wildcats with 13 points.

After scoring the first two field goals of the contest, the Lady Trojans held a brief 4-2 lead to start the game.

A Hutchinson basket tied the game at four with 3:18 remaining in the first quarter and a bucket by Stasha Thomas gave ESJ a 6-4 lead.

Then the ESJ defense began its onslaught.

A mix of poor shooting, excellent defense and domination on the glass ignited a 16-0 run that pushed the ESJ lead to 20-5.

Central Lafourche would be held to only a single free throw in the second period, their first points in over eight minutes and trailed 33-5 at the half.

With a comfortable lead heading into the half, the defense was just as intense for ESJ to start the third quarter. A prolong time period without points, this time 8:37 hit the Lady Trojans and they trailed 38-9 after three.

The fourth quarter mirrored the first three periods. The Lady Wildcat defense held Central Lafourche with a basket until 3:02 remaining in the final period and only four points the entire fourth quarter.

ESJ head coach Troy Giordano was happy to come away with the victory, but said his team will still continue to get better.

“I thought we really came out with some intensity defensively,” Giordano said. “We put a lot of pressure on them and it paid off for us. It allowed us to get some easy buckets in transition which got our offense going.

“A game like this gave us a chance to run different things and try to practice against someone else besides yourself. You get to run some different offenses and defenses. It ended up becoming a good practice where everyone got some playing time and we got to try some stuff out.”

Hutchinson was happy to come away with the victory.

“We just wanted to go in and get a win,” the point guard said. “We just wanted to come out and play hard defensively because we know that they offense will come. It will be there. We just needed to step up defensively.”