As the saying goes, you can only fight fire with fire.

Lee University Lady Flames certainly took that to heart, scorching the net on 11 of 24 shots from behind the arc, which resulted in a 65-53 victory for them over the Valdosta State Lady Blazers.

“We had much better intensity to compete which was really good, but our guard play didn’t make a lot of shots when we had open looks— post play, we were missing two footers down the stretch.”

Hollie German, who entered the contest shooting 47 percent from behind the three point line, lit up VSU’s defense for 20 total points, 12 of them coming on the converted ends of three balls. She was a perfect (4-4) on the night.

“Hollie German is probably the best shooter I’ve ever seen in this league and one of the best offensive players that’s ever been in this league,” Head Coach Kiley Hill said.

But German wasn’t the only sharp shooter, with Madison Lee and Jenna Adams each combining for the other seven three point baskets that LU made in the contest. Lee was four for five, and finished with 13 points while Adams added 18 points.

Despite being double digits, the final score doesn’t reflect how the game was played for most of the contest.

After trailing by two going into the locker-room, VSU responded strongly in the second half, building a seven point lead with 13:41 remaining in the game before LU regained the lead nearly four minutes later.

“We got up seven, we had a chance to go up nine, and go up 11— missed those buckets, and that gave them the opportunity, a great shooting team to get back in it.”

April Thomas and Maggie Davis led the way for VSU with nine points each. Kourtnee Williams and Reshaundra Owens helped the offense as well with eight points apiece

“I feel like it was a tough loss. We came out with a lot more intensity, “Owens, VSU power forward said.

“The last time we played this team they beat us by a very large margin. So this time we felt like we were ready. We were in it, we had the lead. We had a point where it was tied —very close, but toward the end we just started to run out of gas.”

The loss puts VSU on a three point losing skid as the GSC Tournament approaches in March.

Owens believes that it needs to start as a team effort in practice and having players really work together to overcome some of the mental errors that Coach Hill saying that his team needs to play “smarter.”

“I believe it starts in practice. We have had a lot of practices where people, Including myself, where we’ve been about ourselves instead of being more about the team. It’s like everyone says, ‘it starts in practice,’ and what you do in practice will go over into the games,” Owens said.

VSU play Alabama Huntsville on the road on Thursday.

“We got to play smarter,” Hill said.

This article is written by Neil Frawley.