The Poplarville Lady Hornets basketball team used a strong defensive performance to defeat the Bay Lady Tigers Tuesday evening 36-24.

Tytiana Buckely led Poplarville’s scorers with 17 points and Deeanna Freeman added 10 to lead the Lady Hornets to victory.

A win is a step in the right direction, even if it showed that certain areas needed improvement.

“We just have to tidy up our defense a little bit. On the offensive end of the floor we need to be more patient and execute more,” Head Coach Robin Jeffries said.

Poplarville has won several games as the team moves through the non-district portion of this year’s schedule.

Players understand their responsibilities, which allows them to focus on what they’re good at.

After noticing her team wasn’t rebounding the way they needed to prior to the Bay game, Jeffries was hoping to see some improvement from her players and they answered the call.

“I thought we did pretty good on the boards. It looked a little better to me. All the players have strengths and weaknesses. I like to set those at the beginning of the season and if one player’s strength is to rebound they should be rebounding,” Jeffries said.

The Lady Hornets were looking to push the ball against Bay to try and catch the Lady Tigers on the fast break.

However, the Lady Tigers were prepared, so the Lady Hornets weren’t able to be as successful with their transition offense as they had hoped.

“We did that ok (against Bay). We didn’t get as many points from it as we did the first time because they were prepared for it. They knew what to practice for and were sending people to stop the transition,” Jeffries said.

Now the team will prepare for the Gulfport High Thanksgiving Tournament that’ll start Nov. 23.

The Lady Hornets will face Lamar Christian at 11 a.m. for their first game of the tournament before playing a second and final game Nov. 24.

The opponent may be unfamiliar, but Jeffries is hoping her players take advantage of the opportunity to get more games in before district starts.

“I’m just looking for overall improvement. We always talk about coming off the court after each game and learning something we can do better. I don’t really know much about Lamar Christian. I haven’t really scouted them out so I’m just hoping to go and play our game,” Jeffries said.