Photo by Chris Drummond Marshall Tigers Lauren Wherry goes up strong over two Alexandria Area Cardinals defenders in Tuesday night’s action.

MARSHALL– The Marshall Tigers girls basketball team dropped a home contest to the Alexandria Area Cardinals 52-50 on Tuesday evening.

The Tigers and Cardinals played to a standstill in the first few minutes of the ballgame. Then, Bri Simpson started to assert herself and paced the Tigers to a halftime lead of 28-23. Simpson led all scorers with 12 points.

The Cardinals were able to stay in the game by implementing a half-court zone defense that stifled the Tigers’ offense. However, the Tigers were able to hold a slim lead at halftime.

The opening minutes of the second half saw the Cardinals charge back and take the lead.

In the half, there were several moments where both teams would take the lead.

Taleigha Bigler hit a 3-pointer to put the Tigers up by 1 with less than two minutes remaining in the game.

The Cardinals would come down and score. The Tigers then responded with Simpson scoring and getting fouled but missed the free throw.

With 32 seconds remaining, the Cardinals would hit a 3-pointer to go up by 2, 52-50. The Tigers would come down and miss the shot, being forced to foul. The Tigers would commit two more fouls to get into the bonus with seven seconds left

The Cardinals would miss the free throw and Simpson grabbed the rebound. She would race up the court and a timeout was called with 2.2 seconds left.

The Tigers unbounded the ball but couldn’t get a shot off. The Tigers would lose, 52-50.

Simpson scored a game-high 20 points and seven rebounds in the contest. Bigler scored 10 points with two assists. Those were the only two Tigers players who scored in double figures.

“I think today was a good effort all around,” Simpson said. “As a team, we really finished hard around the basket tonight. I think we need to just get out of our heads when it comes to shooting free throws. We practiced them so much and we just need to have confidence that we can make them.”

The Tigers’ defense forced 16 turnovers in the ballgame and only committed six but missed 11 free throws in the contest, shooting 56% from the line and shooting 14-25.

“I think this was a well-played high school basketball game, both teams battled hard tonight,” Tigers head coach Dan Westby said. “Points were hard to come by out there and felt like we left too many free throws out there. Just can’t do that in a game like this. When you have those opportunities, you have to make the most of them. Felt like that was the difference in the game.”

The Marshall Tigers will be next in action on Friday evening as they will travel to Jackson to play against the Jackson County Central Huskies.