By Cody Thomason
The Vicksburg Post

Warren Central’s basketball teams will get a couple of extra days to stew on their last outing.

Wednesday’s home game against Provine has been rescheduled to Feb. 3 because of a schedule conflict with a junior high tournament in Jackson. The teams will still play Friday night at Warren Central in what figures to be a pivotal game in the Division 4-6A race.

Both Warren Central teams are coming off losses to Starkville in the Red Carpet Basketball Classic last weekend.

“Any district game we play is pretty big, because of course you want to come out and be number one in your district so you can probably play the weaker seed and have a better advantage going into your district tournament,” WC girls coach Jackie-Martin Glass said. “We take all district games very seriously.”

Warren Central (16-5, 2-0 Division 4-6A) had a four-game winning streak snapped against Starkville, and will be playing its second game without starting point guard T.T. Sims.

Sims will be serving the second game of a two-game suspension for her ejection following an altercation against Jim Hill last Friday. She is averaging 8.4 points, 2.4 assists and 1.9 steals per game. Her sister Te’Asia filled in and scored a team-high 12 points against Starkville.

Martin-Glass said not having T.T. Sims would hurt, but that the Lady Vikes would find ways to compensate for her absence in the same way they did against Starkville.

“Shift some other players to her position, try to utilize what our strengths are and just play to their weaknesses,” Martin-Glass said. “When you impose your will on the other team then you win. Starkville imposed their will on us and we didn’t counter.”

On the boys’ side, Warren Central is trying to put an ugly 60-27 loss to Starkville behind it. The Vikings (15-4, 2-0 Division 4-6A) had won four straight games and 13 of 14 before that. The 27 points were a season low, and roughly half its average of 56.3 per game.

Provine (6-7, 0-2) is a perennial power, but has struggled this season. It has lost four of its last five games.

“It’s going to be important for us to bounce back, and it’s going to take me as the leader of this team to kind of pull them in and get them refocused,” WC coach Bruce Robinson said.

Robinson said that the biggest thing his players had to focus on before the matchup was team unity. After the loss to Starkville, he said he felt like the team’s success had started to work against it. With two more victories, the Vikings can guarantee their highest win total in more than a decade.

“We have to focus on not letting distractions bother us,” Robinson said. “People have to recommit to what we’re doing.”