SPANISH FORT, Ala. – The Lady Tigers won a thriller for Baldwin County 57-55 over Baker in the night cap of the first round at Spanish Fort's Christmas Bash girls tournament on Monday.

Baker got off to a narrow lead and nursed it through the first half. But BCHS never gave up, something Lady Tiger head coach Robert Wills was happy to see. Their free-throw shooting, however, still needs to improve he said.

“Our defensive effort and overall hustle helped us win that game,” he said. “We've been working on our conditioning a while and it paid off in that aspect tonight. We're going to have hit our free throws though, eventually our luck's going to run out if we don't do that. I think it's more mental than anything. We're definitely going to work on them.”

Early in the fourth quarter, the Lady Tigers fought back to tie the game 43-43. With aggressive defense forcing turnovers at the Baker end, Latreka Jenkins hit back-to-back 3-pointers to help build an eight-point BCHS lead 51-43 with 5:42 left.

Baker came back with a 10-0 run of their own to retake the lead 53-51. But Baldwin County responded and turned the momentum back for six-straight unanswered points to go up 57-53 with 51 seconds left in the contest.

Jenkins finished with a game-high 29 points including four three-pointers for Baldwin County. Teammates CoCo Knight had nine, Kantrell Bush had six, Courtney Stanley had four, Nakea McDougal and Alex Easley had six each. Both SFHS were set to meet in the final game of the tournament Wednesday night. Final results of the three-day round-robin tournament will appear later.