Probably the best way to gain the consistency that first-year Cleveland girls’ basketball coach Mindy Kiser had been missing was having Qetuwrah Abdullah-Muhammed back in the starting lineup.
Cleveland’s sophomore wing had missed four games because of injury but returned to the lineup Wednesday afternoon and helped lead the Lady Blue Raiders to a 65-19 whipping of Tyner in the first round of the Times Free Press holiday tournament at Arts & Sciences.
With Qetuwrah (pronounced Ku-tahrah) on the floor, the Lady Rams were unable to key on her sister Atarah, creating plenty of open looks for both. Atarah scored 13 of her game-high 17 points in the first half as Cleveland raced to a 21-point lead at halftime. Qetuwrah finished with 11 points.
“She makes us a totally different team when she’s out there and healthy,” Kiser said. “I think getting her back for our last game helped her knock a little rust off, and today she looked good. That’s as good as we’ve looked in a while, but the frustrating thing has been we don’t know what to expect for the next game. We have shown signs of getting better, and then all of a sudden we’ll take a step back.
“But we’ve had a good couple of days of practice to build on, and then today we were strong. So hopefully having everybody back together is the start of heading in the right direction.”