Rockvale (4-5) handed the Lewisburg Middle School Tigerettes their second straight loss on Wednesday night when the Lady Ravens defeated LMS 29-20 in the first round of the Chargers Christmas Invitational at Oakland Middle School.

With starting forward and second leading scorer Sydne Solomon unable to play due to an ankle injury, the Tigerettes (5-7) spun their wheels for much of the contest, as Rockvale built a 16-4 advantage in the first half before opening up a 19-4 advantage early in the third quarter.

Too far back

Lewisburg eventually snapped out of their offensive funk and outscored the Lady Ravens 16-10 the rest of the way, but were simply unable to overcome the large deficit en route to suffering their seventh loss of the season.

"I think not having Sydne in the lineup affected our flow and our chemistry because she's a big part of what we do offensively and defensively, but that's not the reason why we lost. We didn't have the focus and intensity that we needed to have in order to win," said LMS coach Chris Coleman. "If we would have played with the same intensity that we showed in the fourth quarter the whole time it would have been a different ballgame."

Although the Tigerettes outrebounded Rockvale 36-26 and held a 14-6 edge on the offensive glass, the Lady Ravens finished with a 9-7 advantage in field goals and outscored Lewisburg 10-5 at the foul line while committing five fewer turnovers (22-17) than LMS.

Scoring load

Leah Hollingsworth carried most of the offensive load for the Tigerettes and paced Lewisburg with 14 points. Taylor Walls, Kimberlyn Greer, and Lexi Cashion rounded out the scoring for LMS with three, two, and one point respectively, while Demariae Ingram and Alli Hobbs both grabbed 10 rebounds.

Nya Caruthers paced Rockvale with 10 points. Mia Metcalf also tallied eight points for the Lady Ravens, while Elaina McGill, Alyson Bigley, and Jamaya Clayborn chipped in five, four, and two points respectively.

Rockvale jumped out to an early 6-0 lead, before the Tigerettes narrowed the gap to 6-3 at the end of the first quarter thanks to three foul shots from Hollingsworth.

The Lady Ravens then took control of the game in the second quarter by outscoring Lewisburg 10-1 in the stanza to take a 16-4 advantage into the break.

After Rockvale stretched their lead to 19-4 early in the third quarter, Hollingsworth and Greer sandwiched a three-point play and a short bank shot around a runner by Caruthers to whittle the deficit to 21-9 at the end of the stanza.

Key quarter

The Lady Ravens tallied the first four points of the fourth period to open up a 25-9 advantage, but the Tigerettes tried to claw their way back into the contest and put together a 11-3 run on the strength of eight points from Hollingsworth and a Walls trey to close the gap to 28-20 with :46 left.

Lewisburg would pull no closer, as they failed to score on their final two possessions, while Rockvale tacked on a Bigley free throw to wrap up their 29-20 victory.