ORRVILLE — The Keith Lady Bears capitalized off the Selma Lady Saints’ mistakes to grab a 40-33 season-opening win at home on Friday.

Cecil Williams, head girls basketball coach of Keith High School, said he saw areas of improvement from his team, but added the Lady Bears need to still work to get in better shape.

“First game of the season, I saw a lot of positives from them, but we still have to work on our conditioning,” Williams said. “Conditioning still needs work. We improved greatly on the free throws, so that was one thing that was positive compared to last year. I just hope we can continue that through the season.”

Anthony Harris, head girls basketball coach of Selma High School (2-4), said the Lady Saints were hurt all night by turnovers and mistakes.

“We just turned the ball over and didn’t make our free throws. We turned the ball over too much. Our turnover ratio is 28.3 a game,” Harris said. “Free throws, we went about 6 for 18. We can’t win like that. And not only that, we’re not playing together, we’re not playing defense. We’re just running up and down the floor. We just have to go back to the drawing board, go back to the floor and continue to work.”

The Lady Bears set the tone early, jumping out to a 12-4 lead in the first quarter before taking a 19-12 lead into halftime.

Keith pushed its lead back to double digits late in the third as back-to-back baskets in the paint by Zykia Pettway and Lyteisha Phillips helped the Lady Bears farther ahead, with Dasheena Thomas adding one more shot at the end of the third to make it 28-18 entering the fourth.

The Lady Saints cut the lead back to nine when Kendra McCovery hit a 3-pointer to make it 35-26 with 4:00 left to play, but Keith extended its lead down the stretch with successful trips to the line by Pettway, Thomas and Harriet Winchester.

Winchester led Keith with 14 points, while Phillips added 9 points and Pettway had 8 ponts.

McCovery led Selma with 9 points, 10 rebounds and one block, while Brenna Porter had 8 points and 12 rebounds for the Lady Saints.

The Lady Saints will take the floor again at home in their Thanksgiving Tournament starting on Nov. 23.

The Lady Bears will travel to Uniontown next to face the R.C. Hatch Bobcats on Monday at 5 p.m.