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ALTON - The Alton Lady Redbirds opened their season with a 52-48 victory on Tuesday night over the Calhoun Lady Warriors.
Alton never trailed and used their superior size to dominate the glass on both ends.
Junior forward Anita Smith propelled the Lady Redbirds by scoring all of her 11 points in the fourth quarter, including the game-winning basket to put Alton up 49-46 with less than 90 seconds to play.
“That’s a surprise to us,” Alton head coach Tammy Talbert said. “She was a reserve and somebody that wasn’t in the top eight rotation at one point, but she sure did earn her way into it tonight. She had a heck of a game.”
“We let them back into the game, and we were able to get a couple of key steals and a couple of layups,” Talbert said. “Every time they came down [Calhoun] had that mentality that they were going to score. They did a great job. They had back-cuts that we weren’t defending and were getting some open layups.”
Calhoun will have one of their youngest teams in recent memory this season. They have one senior, two juniors and eight sophomores. However, the Lady Warriors outscored Alton 18-15 in the second half and were within a point of tying the game with under two minutes to play.
“Our effort’s been really good the first two weeks of preseason practice,” Calhoun head coach Mark Hillen said. “The two things that really killed us tonight were some untimely turnovers and rebounding. The physicality that Alton brought to the boards was the big difference.”
The lone senior, Sophie Lorton, played like one as she led all scorers with 19 points, including 12 in the second half. Sophomore point guard Collen Schumann added 17 points for the Lady Warriors.
“We expect [Sophie] to do that all year,” Hillen said. “We just want to keep her out of foul trouble, which she had in the first half, but she came out and did everything I expected her to do. She was the main communicator. Offensively she helped calm things down.”
On the flip side, the Lady Redbirds have eight seniors, two juniors, including leading scorer and rebounder from last season, Ivoree Lacey, who was unavailable to play. Laila McNeal led Alton with 13 points, and Cri’Shonna Hickman added eight. Freshman guard Renee Raglin scored seven points all in the first half.
“We have a deep bench,” Talbert said. “We got girls that can play in different positions. We’ve got a group that we can put in for length and speed.”
Steven Spencer also contributed to this story.
