After a heartbreaking and emotional two point loss to Liberty Magnet of Baton Rouge last week, a team that many expect to compete for the Select Division I championship this season, one could forgive New Iberia Senior High boys basketball team if it didn’t have its A game five days later when the Jackets played host to Class 3A Rayne.

Add the fact that the team has another emotional loss as assistant coach Josh Lierman’s mother-in-law passed away during that five day stretch and there was the potential that New Iberia could be facing its second consecutive loss instead of starting a new win streak.

And, yes, NISH did not have its A game against the visiting Wolves,

Turned out, however, that the B-/C+ it gave was more than enough as NISH jumped out to a 12-1 lead in the first quarter and pretty much maintained that double-digit lead the rest of the way in a 55-33 win over Rayne Tuesday night.

“The energy and effort wasn’t there tonight coming off of a big game Thursday night and Coach Lierman and his family weighing heavily on our hearts, it’s hard to have a whole lot of energy,” NISH coach Chad Pourciau said. “But when you get a win it’s a plus and we get a chance to start a new win streak.”

Wayne Randall-Bashay, the Xavier University of New Orleans commit, led NISH with six points but had 10 rebounds as no Jacket scored more than nine points in the win.

“We came off that big loss to Liberty, one of the top teams in the state, and we didn’t think this game was that much,” Randall-Bashay said. “But we know that we can’t do that, we have to come out and pound teams like this.”

“We came out in the first quarter on fire and then in the second quarter we got lax. We have to be consistent, we can’t have ups and downs like that.”

NISH built an early first quarter lead despite missing too many close-in shots on layups and putbacks off of rebounds. something that Pourciau noticed right away.

“The funny thing is that we shot well from outside and we made a lot of 3-pointers in the first half, we just couldn’t finish around the bucket,” Pourciau said. “We left 10-12 points easily in the first half around the rim.”

“It was just one of those nights. Basketball is a funny game, sometimes you make them, sometimes you miss them. The big thing is that our energy and effort wasn’t there.”

Otis Anderson led NISH with nine points, Austin Delahoussaye and Kentavious Smith also had six points each for NISH while Forrest Griffin led Rayne (5-8) with 12 points.

Now the Jackets hit a long stretch of road games starting Thursday night against Patterson at 6:30 pm at the Southside Tournament.

“We have three games at Southside, then we go to St. Martinville, then Northwest, then we go to the St. Martinville Tournament, then another tournament at Teurlings,” Pourciau said. “I think that our next home game is Jan. 10. “We have something like 12-15 games on the road over the next month.”

“We’re going to find out a lot about ourselves. It’s a good way to test ourselves and we’re looking forward to it.”