Jackson girls score big early, win district opener

Despite a 3-point barrage from Seckman, the Jackson girl’s basketball team came away with a big win on Thursday night.

Jackson opened up the Class 6 District 1 tournament with a 20-point win, downing the Jaguars 61-41 to advance to the district semifinals. The Indians used double-digit scoring efforts from three players to power past a sharpshooting Seckman squad.

“We came out firing on all cylinders,” Indians coach Adam Stoneking said. “We were hitting pretty much everything we threw up and we created multiple turnovers in the first quarter.”

Jackson’s offense had its own retort to a slick Seckman effort, scoring 25 points in the first quarter alone. Katie Waller and Camryn Alsdorf scored nine points each in the frame, accounting for 18 of the points early on.

Senior standout Waller made her presence known, leading the Indians with a game-high 16 points in the win, hitting two 3-pointers and making six total field goals. Alsdorf, a sophomore, put in another 15 points to help push the Indian offense to a big win.

Maci Wendel (10), Holland Guilliams (6), Aubrey Brothers (4), Katy St. John (3), Lauryn McDowell (2) and Lillian Gibbs (2) all further chipped in for the Indians.

“Overall, we shot the ball really well,” Stoneking said. “I think we had five or six girls hit a three. I liked the way that we were ready to step up and knock down shots. When we had open shots, we knocked them down.”

With Jackson receiving the first seed in the district for the third consecutive season, the Indians matched up with an eighth-seeded Seckman that averaged less than two 3-point makes per game.

The Jaguars turned this stat on its head, however, hitting eight 3-pointers in the contest, six of which came in the first half before Stoneking and the Indians came together to work on limiting the Seckman perimeter shooting effort.

“[Seckman] shot the ball really well from outside tonight,” Stoneking said. “The score is a little bit closer than what we probably thought it was going to be.

“We had a little bit of a bad defensive effort there at the end of the second quarter, but we picked it up in the third. I thought we played really well.”

With the win, Jackson advances to the district semifinal to take on, just like their boy’s basketball counterpart, the Lindbergh Flyers.

The Flyers, now 14-13, advanced on a win against Mehlville in their district opener, giving way to a matchup with the first-seeded Indians. Stoneking knows what to expect out of the Flyers, with the two teams getting glances at each other in the Flyer Invitational earlier this year.

“They've seen us play a few times this year at their tournament,” Stoneking said. “It's not like we're going to be able to sneak up on them or anything.

“But I also think it's a game if we can go out and play defense the way that we played our last five or six games and then execute on offense, I think we might be okay.”