The Sterling girls basketball team may lack size, but there is no lack of effort or energy for the Golden Warriors.

Sterling’s relentless defensive pressure helped force 23 turnovers in a 54-31 Western Big 6 Conference home win on Thursday night.

Jossy James led Sterling (7-2, 4-1 Big 6) with 28 points and five steals. Sterling held the Panthers (2-9, 0-6) to just 10 points in the first half and led 51-17 after three quarters.

“Our goal going into this game was to turn up the defensive intensity, and I think we did really well at using our speed and agility to our advantage,” Jae James said. “We don’t have much height, so we definitely use our speed and our agility to our advantage.”

Sterling constantly tipped balls and closely guarded UT for four quarters to overcome its lack of size. Its tallest player, 6-foot Macie Lofgren, is out with injury. Nia Harris is Sterling’s tallest active player at 5-foot-9.

Harris had 10 points and six rebounds as she and Joslyn Green (eight points, six rebounds) helped guard UT’s 6-foot-3 Lynelle Awou. Awou finished with 12 points and six boards. She was limited to just five points through three quarters.

Green said effort helps make up for size.

“I definitely just have to work more,” she said, “especially with my post moves and learning how to finish on bigger girls like that.”

Sterling led 16-4 and forced 10 turnovers through the first quarter.

“We’ve just got to keep that up,” Green said, “and know how to put on the pressure.”

Jae James said forcing turnovers is key against bigger teams.

“Especially with our size disadvantage and teams that we play in the rest of the Big 6,” she said. “Just to keep the energy up, the intensity up and just the flow of our offense, [it] all stems from defense.”

“Their effort obviously was the difference maker on defense for making us turn the ball over,” UT coach Chase Pavelonis said. “I think we’re making strides of seeing it and trying to dictate our outcome, but sometimes the speed got to use a little tonight.”

Sterling coach Taylor Jackson said defensive effort is key for the team. The Warriors have won five straight games while allowing just 30.8 points per contest.

“We know our defense can create some really good opportunities for us offensively, so we’ve been challenging our group,” she said. “Picking up a little bit more full-court, adding a little bit more pressure to force the offense to have to do some different things.

“I liked what I saw today, because I thought that they played it all five together as a group. I thought they improved a lot from what we had seen against L-P on Monday.”

Jackson says the team must play into its quickness and defense, which can lead to easy baskets.

“We have some big games where we are going to be very undersized, so we’ve got to be able to play into those strengths,” she said. “I thought they did a great job with that tonight.”

Sterling had 14 steals and emptied its bench late as Xandria Prather hit a 3-pointer. Jae James finished with three points and three assists, and Alivia Gibson added two points and four steals.

Jackson said defending a post player like Awou, who can’t be guarded one-on-one, was a good challenge for the team.

“A lot of our post players haven’t guarded a player like that, so we’ve got to learn and we’ve got to get better every night,” she said. “We’ll be challenged from her on out. I thought they answered that really well.”