[1/22/03]Warren Central wanted to make sure the Northwest Rankin “Road Show” started on a negative note.

Having to abandon their gym for the rest of the season because of renovations, the Cougars dropped a 69-59 decision to WC (14-7) on Tuesday night.

Chi-Chi Ezekwe scored a team-high 17 points and Dewayne Washington came off the bench to score 13 in the win.

“We played aggressive and made some good plays,” WC coach Preston Wilson said.

Super-sophomore Jeremy Bibbs scored 24 points and grabbed 11 rebounds for the Cougars, who lost their fourth straight game.

“He’s an athlete and he’s going to get his points,” Wilson said of Bibbs. “What we had to do was take charges on him and once we started doing that, we got him in foul trouble. He’s a big part of their offense.”

Bibbs scored nine in the first quarter, but Ezekwe countered with seven for the Vikings, who held a 17-14 lead at the end of the first.

The Vikings used an 11-2 run in the second quarter to hold a double-digit lead for the rest of the game.

The run started when a foul was called against a Northwest player putting WC in the bonus. The foul was not reported to the scorer’s table and WC inbounded the ball.

Wilson called timeout to correct the error and put WC on the free throw line. Washington hit both free throws, then the referees gave the ball back to WC. Ezekwe scored a layup and a free throw for an unusual 5-point play.

With Bibbs on the bench most of the third quarter, built the lead to as many as 16 before the Cougars made a comeback to cut the lead to eight late in the game.

(G) NW Rankin 48, WC 44

A lack of fouls did Warren Central in on Friday night.

Trailing 46-44 with 38 seconds to play, WC had only committed two fouls, well below the six needed to put the opponent into a 1-and-1.

Twenty-five seconds ran off the clock before the first foul and Northwest Rankin scored a layup off an inbounds pass with about eight seconds to play to take the 4-point lead.

“We hadn’t had many fouls called against us, but I’m not going to say we didn’t foul,” WC coach Donny Fuller said. “We needed to foul and we didn’t do a very good job at that.”

Cookie Johnson scored 15 points and grabbed 11 rebounds in the loss and Carla Latham had 7.

Lindsey Dukes scored 21 points and snagged 13 rebounds to lead the Lady Cougars.