BASKETBALL: Carterville fights off Lady Indians, 59-47

The Lady Indians suffered a loss in their first conference game of the season on Tuesday night, falling 59-47 at home to visiting Carterville. The Lady Lions got a game-high 19 points from Megan Barrett, who scored seven of those points in the fourth quarter to keep Carterville out in front.

Du Quoin was able to stick around late in the game despite trailing by fifteen entering the fourth quarter.

"We had good effort all night long," said DHS head coach Shawn File. "It was kind of a game of runs in the second half. They'd make a run, we'd put our press on, we'd get a little run back, so we chipped away and felt pretty good about ourselves, but once they would break the press that's where we'd run into a little bit of trouble. When we were able to press, it was pretty effective against their guard play."

A steal by Tarynn Mays led to a fast-break layup for Kate Smith to cut Carterville's lead to eleven at 48-37 with just over six minutes to play, but the Lady Lions responded in a hurry, scoring the next five points to restore a sixteen-point advantage.

Hannah Baxter's three-pointer with four minutes to go again trimmed the lead to eleven, and Grace Haney's bucket from inside moments later made it a nine-point game, but Carterville was able to hit enough free throws down the stretch to hang on.

Alaina Caldwell had 17 points to lead Du Quoin, a dozen of which came in the first half. Smith (9), Jordyn Bullar (6), Sadie Day (4), Mackenzie Jackson (3), Baxter (3), Mays (3) and Haney (2) also scored for the Lady Indians.

File was please with the offensive effort from his team, but said the defense gave up too much.

"Alaina knocked down some jump shots for us," File said. "They packed into that 1-2-2 zone and kind of dared Kate and Alaina to shoot, and Alaina knocked down a couple."

"We want to be over 40, I feel like if we can hold a team under 40 our chances of winning are much, much better. We gave up 59, we've got to improve on that and try to tighten things up."

Carterville also won the junior-varsity game, 43-26, after trailing 10-7 following the opening quarter of play.

Baxter led Du Quoin with eleven points, Haney had seven, Kat Robison four, Emily Born three and Jackson one.

DHS (2-4 varsity record, 0-1 conference) will play at Harrisburg on Thursday night.