Patience pays off

MAMOU – If patience is a virtue, then the Mamou Lady Demons are surely a virtuous group.
The Lady Demons used a 16-point fourth quarter run to pull away from the Episcopal Lady Knights and take a 44-34 regional playoff win here Monday night.
Mamou will now have to travel to Vivian to take on the No. 1 team in the state rankings, North Caddo. The Lady Rebels defeated Sacred Heart in the first round 74-23.
The quarterfinal match-up is set for Thursday night at 6 p.m.
It was a battle of wills from the opening tip, as both teams could not find much offense to begin the game.
Episcopal hit a three-point shot with just a little over two minutes gone in the first quarter to take an early 4-0 lead.
Mamou did not find the basket until the five minute mark, as the Lady Knights pulled ahead 8-2 with three minutes left in the quarter.
The teams traded buckets towards the end of the period, with the Lady Demons knocking down a last second shot to make the score 10-6 at the end of one quarter of play.
Although the second quarter belonged to Mamou, the Lady Demons could not muster enough offense to do any damage to Episcopal.
Mamou scored in spurts during the stanza, but only managed to record 10 total points. Episcopal was good for six points in the quarter, tying the game at 16-16 as the buzzer sounded to end the first half of play.
“In the beginning, our offense was really stagnate,” said Mamou head coach Mark Temple. We could not throw a rock in the ocean. So I kept telling the girls we need to keep playing good defense and that will keep us in the game until our offense can get on track.”
“We went into the locker room and made some adjustments. We talked about being patient and things will start to fall our way.”
Mamou did just that in the second half. The Lady Demons continued to turn up the defensive pressure on Episcopal and forced the Lady Knights into a number of turnovers and errant shots.
However, Mamou was still not hitting on all cylinders on offense. The two squads remained deadlocked throughout most of the third period.
Episcopal sank a two-point basket with 47 seconds remaining in the quarter to take a 28-26 lead. That scored remained as the period came to a close.
The patience of the Lady Demons finally paid off in the final period.
Episcopal knocked down an early basket to open the lead up to four points.
From that point on, the Lady Demons took control of the game, getting huge baskets off of turnovers and controlling the boards, as they scored 16 unanswered points.
For Episcopal head coach Mike Kuhn the game turned when the Lady Demons were able to get the home standing crowd into the game.
“When they began to pull ahead and their crowd became louder and louder, I think our players were rattled,” Kuhn said. “Up until that point I thought it was a great game played by two equally matched teams. Their speed was a big factor and we did not get the ball inside as much as I would have liked us to.”
Episcopal was forced to foul down the stretch and the Lady Demons responded, sinking five of ten from the charity stripe in the last two minutes of the game.
Tia Gallow led all Mamou scorers with 12 points.
Now the Lady Demons must travel to face arguably the best team in the state in Class 2A. How will Mamou handle that situation?
“In order to be the man, you have to beat the man,” stated Temple. “We can’t run from them forever. We are going to have to go there focused on the task at hand. If we can play team defense like we have been playing and rebound well, we have a chance.”