Demopolis head basketball coach Jesse Bell was frustrated Monday night. His team dropped a 60-52 game to Autaugaville that the sixth-year head man believes it should have won.

“They out-rebounded and out-hustled us,” Bell said of Autaugaville. “They just out-played Demopolis. A team we usually should have beaten beat us and beat us fairly well.”

Bell said his team showed poor practice habits leading up to the game as six players were late for one such session and two others failed to show entirely.

“That set you up for the way they played on Monday,” Bell said. “I will not tolerate that and I guarantee it will not happen again.”

According to Bell, the team came out flat from the outset.

“We weren’t attacking the basket. We were shooting a lot of threes and the shots just weren’t falling,” Bell said.

The Tigers trailed 13-2 at the end of the first quarter. The team managed to score only 10 points in the second quarter before finding its rhythm in the second half.

“I wasn’t pleased at all with the way we played defense. We didn’t play Demopolis basketball for sure. We just underestimated the team. We didn’t play good defense,” Bell said. “That’s all going to be corrected in practice.”

Bell said the loss seemed to snap his team back into focus.

He gave the squad Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday away from practice. The team will hit the court again today in preparation for Saturday’s game with Linden.

“This opened their eyes. You’ve got to go out and play every night” Bell said. “Hopefully we’ll bounce back Saturday in our classic against Linden. If we don’t, we’ll get embarassed again.”