NATCHEZ — For the first couple of minutes, the Trinity girls looked like they were still feeling the effects of a long Christmas break.

But soon after that, it was business as usual, as the Lady Saints easily handled Tensas Academy 52-18 Friday night to improve to 14-7 on the season.

Trinity eventually took a 35-point lead midway through the third quarter, giving Lady Saints head coach Richy Spears a chance to sub in his backups while the clock ran continuously.

“We played hard tonight,” Spears said. “We’ve been off three days, and I don’t know if we had a little rust or something. We missed some easy chances, and we have to work on that, because we’ve got two tough games coming up after this.”

Trinity began the first quarter with just six points in the first five minutes of play. Tensas Academy cut the score 6-4 with 2:50 in the first — the closest it would make the score before Trinity woke up from its slumber.

“I don’t know what it was (that was going on early),” Spears said. “Maybe it was a lack of focus. But they really stepped it up after that and got better.”

Bethany Ogden stepped things up for the Lady Saints late in the first quarter. She scored seven of her 12 first-quarter points with less than a minute to play, giving Trinity a 20-6 lead after one. Ogden added six more points in the second quarter, and Trinity was ahead 36-10 at intermission.

In the third quarter, Ogden’s three-pointer at the 5:33 mark gave the Lady Saints a 45-10 lead, allowing the clock to run continuously. Spears let his bench finish the game from that point.

Despite the slow start by the Trinity offense, Tensas Academy never scored more than six points in one period. It had six in the first, and four each in the second, third and fourth quarters.

“I feel like (our defense) is always there,” Spears said. “That’s what we talk about a lot more than our offense — you have to be able to play defense and rebound. That’s all I talk about, and that’s probably why I coach defense in football.

“If you play good defense, that allows you to get fast breaks in transition, which is what we live off of. We don’t set up, we just get it and go.”

Odgen finished the game with 21 points. Madelyn Cross tallied 12 points.