Florida State College at Jacksonville (2-8) traveled across town to face Trinity Baptist College (3-6) on Saturday afternoon. This is the second meeting between the pair since November when FSCJ pulled out a 77-66 win on their homecourt.
A struggling first quarter performance has plagued FSCJ this season until tonight's match-up. Well-balanced shooting found FSCJ 5-10 from the floor and 2-4 from behind the arc in the opening minutes led by freshman guard, Kyra Frazine and sophomore transfer Lucia Caballero.
The second quarter ran dry for FSCJ shooting a dismal 20% from the floor only making two baskets out of ten attempts. Trinity Baptist took advantage of FSCJ's offensive struggles and outscored them 13-9. A strong first quarter was enough for FSCJ to keep a 28-23 lead heading into the half.
The third quarter saw a re-vitalized FSCJ team step on the court ready to rally back. Defense sparked a steady comeback as FSCJ's press flustered the Eagles of Trinity Baptist and opened up scoring opportunities for the teams rotating bench. Hitting 9 -12 from the free-throw line expanded FSCJ's third quarter efforts bringing the score to 45-33 with one quarter left to play.
Determined to put a notch in the win column, FSCJ duplicated their third quarter performance adding 6-6 from the line to help seal the 62-46 victory. Despite the dominating 40-31 performance on the boards from Trinity Baptist and FSCJ's inability for second chance opportunities, they were able to capitalize on tonight's free-throw accuracy. Finishing with a team season high 82% from the line, FSCJ's sunk 23 of the 28 free-throws shot.
"We have been stressing the next best play mentality with our team." said head coach Diana Couch. "If we can learn to not dwell on our mistakes and keep playing through them things will change drastically for us, tonight we had glimpses of that. Also a strong free-throw performance and added bursts from our bench have been missing and were a big factor in us pulling off a win against a competitive Trinity Baptist."
Freshman guard Kyra Frazine has been a consistent offensive threat for FSCJ lately and tonight was no different with her 15 point, 5 rebounds and 4 steals performance. Frazine's efficiency showed going 5-9 from the floor, 1-2 from the 3pt line and 2-2 from the free-throw line.
Freshman, point guard, Janay Demmitt added 10 points going an impressive 6 for 7 from the free-throw line and leading the team with 7 rebounds. Travonda Jackson and Kahliya Gaitor added 9 points apiece with Lucia Caballero contributing 8.