ALTON – Both Alton and Jersey entered their fifth-place contest of the Alton Tip-Off Classic Saturday evening with hopes of getting their first win of the season under their belts.
The Redbirds and Panthers were tied at 21 at the long break, but Jersey got on a roll in the third quarter and used it to go on to a 44-34 win, putting their record at 1-2 on the young season; the Redbirds fell to 0-3 on the year with a game coming up at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday against Crossroads College Prep of St. Louis at home.
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“We spent just about our whole halftime about defensive intensity, defensive effort,” said Panther coach Kevin Strebel, “smart defense. I didn’t feel like we played that in the first half; we challenged the girls to show some intensity and play much better defense in the second half, and they did.
“We gave up half as many points in the second half than we did in the first. Alton’s having a hard time scoring from outside, and we were still letting them get inside to the paint on the defensive end, and we talked about it before the game. I think the girls are very happy with their effort in that second half, as am I, and it’s one of those things we can build on that because we’re going to have to be a decent defensive team in order to win games.”
“Today's game goes back to our energy level and their intensity,” said Redbird coach Bob Rickman. “We came out flat in the second half; we talked at halftime, we should be excited – tied ball game – and we come out flat, we make four or five turnovers there at the beginning of the half and it's hard to overcome when you're making those kinds of mistakes and not having the energy to get it back.”
“I told them in the locker room, and I'll say it – they’ve got to figure out how to be a team. We had 11 players who dressed tonight and have nine who have been dressing who are dressing and they're not a team. There's not encouragement from one another, there’s not the positive nature of something when someone does something good – we just want to look for the negative in everything that happens. We’ve got to get that fixed first and then we’ve got to work on all of the other things.
“Some of the bad passes, our defense, our rebounding, our decision-making on the offense, all of those things. It’s part of a being a young team, but it’s part of things; you’ve got to make some adjustments, you’ve got to fix some things. When things don’t work – the definition of insanity is doing the same things over and over and expecting a different result, and it’s not happening.”
Mackenzie Thurston led the way for the Panthers on the offensive end, leading all scorers with 19 points on the day. “She’s capable of doing that,” Strebel said. “She had some big games for us last year and even going back to her sophomore year; she thrives in certain situations that, if we can create that for her, she can get up there and finish and even take the foul and finish as she did there tonight.
“She’s got the athletic ability that, when we can find a way to utilize that and get her into space, that’s what really matters," Strebel said.
It was Thurston who led the way for the Panthers in that third-quarter surge, scoring a good number of Jersey’s points during that third term, then followed up with another surge in the final quarter to help the Panthers run out winners. The Panther lead got out to as much as 12 points in the second half before the Redbirds managed to cut it to the final nine-point margin.
Kiara Chapman and Bethany Munstermann each had six points for the Panthers in the win to go with Thurston’s 19; Rayn Tally led Alton with 15 points, with Kenya Burnett adding six points for AHS.
