By BAKER ELLIS / Sports Editor

CHELSEA – It took the Thompson basketball Lady Warriors little time to get rolling in the 2015-16 season, opening up on the road at Chelsea on Nov. 12 with an easy 65-36 win. Thompson lost two of its key pieces off last year’s team that ended the regular season as the No. 6 team in 7A when Kelsea Bivins and Janese Richardson graduated, and it was uncertain how head coach Josh Golden’s team would come out of the gate in 2015-16 with the previous year’s two leading scorers no longer on the floor.

Golden got his answer early on, as Thompson jumped out to a 16-6 lead after the first quarter and never was truly tested in its season opener.

“I though we were better offensively than we were defensively,” Golden said of his team’s first performance of the year. “I thought we did a good job of sharing the ball, we were unselfish offensively. We have to be a lot more sound defensively, our rotations have to be better. I thought we played well, I just didn’t think we necessarily played smart all the time.”

After the end of the first quarter, the Lady Warriors only extended their lead from that point on, and took a 37-17 lead into the half.

Thompson implemented a 3-2 zone defense for the majority of the game and threw in some 1-3-1 as well that effectively shut down the Chelsea attack, toward the end of the first half the Lady Warriors started to take too many chances on defense and drew a number of fouls, but still controlled the game.

After more of the same in the second half, Thompson moved to 1-0 on the season via a 65-36 win.

“It’s the first game of the year, you don’t really have a scout and you don’t really have an idea of what their going to be doing,” Golden added. “Defensively we have to be a better but offensively I thought we did a good job of sharing the ball.”

Indiah Cohill led Thompson with 14 points, Lauren Black added 13 and Brittany Grice added 10 points and seven blocks to lead the way for Thompson. Michaella Edwards had 14 points for Chelsea.