Liberty County High School’s Lady Panthers basketball team improved to 3-2 overall with a 54-31 win over McIntosh County Academy on Tuesday night in Darien.
 Coach Carolyn Kelly said her girls jumped out to a quick lead and that gave her the chance to see what kind of depth she has on the bench.
“The good thing about that game is that it gave us an opportunity to see a lot of the kids play. We started off pretty strong and we got a big jump in the start so I was able to take out and rest a lot of my seniors and give our younger kids experience on the court,” she said.
“We ran a zone and we’ve been working on that zone. Our footwork is not where it needs to be on the man-to-man defense.
“We have the personnel to run it. We are just not getting at it as hard as we need to so that is what we tried to focus on.”
Kelly said her squad steadily is gaining experience and is poised to be ready for Region 2A-AAAA games in January.
The Lady Panthers play host to Tattnall County tonight in a nonregion matchup. The Lady Warriors were 20-9 overall last season and 15-5 in Region 2-AA.
But LCHS and Tattnall County have a long history — the teams were region foes back in the 3-AAA days.
“Tattnall has always been real competitive. You can’t count them out,” Kelly said. “They play extremely hard. We are going to continue working on the zones and on offense. We have to get back in the habit of driving the gaps more, making their defense shift more and draw our girls open.”
Tip-off is at 6:30 tonight. The girls host the Lady Tide of Long County at
6 p.m. tomorrow.