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Alcona breezes by Tawas, starts new season 2-0

Photo by Ben Murphy Alcona's Liz Henderson converts on a lay-up despite the efforts of a Tawas Area defender Tuesday night. The Lady Tigers are now 2-0 after topping the Lady Braves 56-25.

It won’t always be this easy.

For the first two nights of the season however, the Alcona girls basketball team made it look exactly that.

A day after dominating Mio in their season opener, the Lady Tigers rolled to another win Tuesday, taking down host Tawas 56-25 in a non-league battle, giving them a 2-0 start to a season that had been delayed since November amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Overall, I am happy with how it is going,” Alcona head coach Mark Feldhiser said. “We are certainly showing the effects of not having any contact practices; conditioning is not quite where it needs to be and our defense had some lapses once in awhile. But, you know what we gave up 25 points tonight and we will take that.”

The two teams met on the court three times last season, and each contest was a hard-fought battle that wasn’t decided until the closing moments.

Photo by Ben Murphy Karen Sharboneau drills one of her two three pointers.

Alcona, wasted little time in taking control of this go-around however, scoring the first 19 points of the game and held a comfortable 21-6 lead after the first quarter.

“It is never easy to come to Tawas and win and to do it early in the season like this is good,” Feldhiser said. “We will see them again and then the districts are here as well, so chances are we will see them then too. It is good to come down here and get a win in this gym.”

The Braves whittled the Tiger lead to 25-15 late in the quarter, but Kelsey Hansen drilled a 16-footer at the halftime buzzer that pushed Alcona’s lead to 29-16.

Hansen, who finished with nine points in the game, netted the first four points of the second half as well, sparking what would be an 18-2 advantage in the third quarter, for a 47-18 edge.

Alcona started the fourth quarter with a tough drive through the lane that Liz Henderson was able to convert, and Rachel Layton cashed in on basket in transition. This gave the Tigers their biggest lead of the night at 51-18.

Alcona’s scoring slowed in the final minutes of the contest, but it did put an exclamation point on the night, when Karen Sharboneau drilled home a three-pointer for the final points at 56-25.

During Alcona’s 19-0 run to open the game, it managed to get several easy baskets in the paint. Henderson had three early field-goals close to the rim, and managed to finish with a game-high 15 points despite battling foul trouble most the night.

Anna Loyer also had a three pointer roll kindly off the rim and in for what was a 12-0 lead at the time and Carmen Dellar capped off the run by cutting through the lane, taking in a well-placed pass and sending the ball home for her lone points of the contest.

“I thought we did a really good job, especially early in the ball game of getting the ball to the post,” Feldhiser said. “We are trying to establish our posts all the time. We really dominated the game early and our post players, all three of them, did a really nice job of getting into position and making easy buckets for us. That is the way we have to play, feed the posts and work inside-out. That is how this team is built.”

To go along with Henderson’s 15 points, Rachel Layton scored 12, Sharboneau hit a pair of threes and finished with six points and Loyer and Lily Bilbey had five points apiece.

Alcona returns to action on Monday, when it plays at two-time defending North Star League Big Dipper champion Oscoda (1-0), for a key early season showdown.

“We had a little foul trouble early, we got a little lazy on defense and committed too many fouls in this game,” Feldhiser said. “We’ll see, we have three practices to get ready for Oscoda next week. That will be our focus right now.”

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