STARKVILLE — “Find a way.”
Laura Lee Holman’s words served as a reminder this wasn’t an ordinary day for the New Hope High School girls basketball team.
Not only was leading scorer D.J. Sanders finding it difficult to make a shot, but the Lady Trojans also were battling foul trouble and the pesky tandem of Starkville High’s Blair Schaefer and Imane Montgomery.
But teams with lofty postseason aspirations find ways to overcome atypical afternoons thanks to the help of supporting casts with impeccable timing.
Taylor Baudoin and Moesha Calmes showed Friday they can be two pieces to what Holman and the Lady Trojans believe is a championship equation.
Baudoin scored eight of her team-high 18 points in the fourth quarter, while Calmes scored 11 of her 17 points in the final 10 minutes to help New Hope beat Starkville 66-58 in the Travis Outlaw Slam Dunk at The Hump.
Mercedes Mattix added 13 points and Kaitlyn Bradley had seven to help New Hope (9-1) earn its second victory of the season against Starkville. The victory also was the 100th at the school for Holman, a former standout softball and basketball player at New Hope High.
Holman downplayed the significance of her 100th victory. She said it was more important for New Hope to bounce back from a loss to Northwest Rankin last week in Jackson. She felt the team could have won that game but that it didn’t meet the challenge.
“I was really hoping I could leave Jackson with 100,” Holman said. “We have got in the habit of when things get tough or when things don’t go our way we kind of melt. It is something I have really been pushing for us not to do. Tonight, D.J. couldn’t buy a basket and we kind of got in some foul trouble and we kind of felt like the referees didn’t really give us a break, either. But they just kept on fighting, kept on fighting, kept on fighting. I feel like we are overcoming that monster of letting outside things kind of take us out of our game.”
Calmes and Baudoin helped New Hope answer the call. Schaefer (game-high 25 points) hit a 3-pointer and a driving basket to help Starkville cut the deficit to 40-39 in the third quarter. An offensive rebound putback by gave Starkville a 41-40 lead with 1 minute, 50 seconds to play in the stanza.
That’s when Calmes found a way to make a difference.
The senior point guard helped the Lady Trojans recover from back-to-back turnovers by draining a jump shot that put her team back on top. She added a contested jump shot and a 3-pointer off an assist from Bradley to give New Hope a 47-43 lead entering the fourth quarter.
“Our post player, D.J. was having a bad day and coach talked to us at shootaround about stepping up and being there for your teammates,” Calmes said. “I kind of saw them kind of get down and I was like, ‘Maybe I need to step up and do my part and help her out.’ That is what I did. I made a couple of shots in the beginning and got my confidence up and I just kept knocking down shots.”
But Montgomery converted a layup and Kelsey Jones scored on an offensive rebound — the third offensive rebound of the trip — to help the Lady Yellow Jackets tie the game for the second time in the quarter. Schaefer then drilled a 3-pointer with 4:52 remaining to give Starkville its last lead, 52-51.
That’s when Baudoin found a way to make a difference.
With her team trailing by three, Baudoin banked in a jump shot and then beat the Lady Yellow Jackets down the court for a layup that gave New Hope the lead for good, 55-54, with 3:12 left.
Baudoin, a senior guard/forward, said she feels quicker and stronger after recovering from a weight-bearing fracture to her right foot last season. The injury forced her to be in a cast for four to six weeks and a boot for a while after that. She played with the Birmingham Road Runners Amateur Athletic Union basketball team in the summer. She feels that experience helped her improve. Added work on guard and post skills and plenty of running in practice have allowed Baudoin to build endurance and confidence. Those qualities came through in plenty of ways Friday afternoon.
“I knew I needed to do what I needed to do to help my team to get us where we needed to be,” Baudoin said. “I pretty much decided I was going to do what I needed to do to help my team.”
Calmes and Baudoin weren’t done. Calmes hustled for a loose ball and threw it off Schaefer to give New Hope possession. Baudoin then worked in the paint for an offensive rebound putback. She rebounded another miss on the ensuing possession that led to a jump shot by Calmes that forced Starkville coach Kristie Williams to call timeout trailing 59-54 with 2:16 to play.
As the Lady Trojans walked to their huddle, Sanders showed everyone’s appreciation as she gave Baudoin a pat on the back. Baudoin kept her hands on her hips with her elbows bent and acknowledged the encouragement in workmanlike fashion.
Baudoin didn’t feel her performance was any different than what she has been doing this season. Still, she said she felt the team starting to “melt” a little bit in the third quarter, but that it responded and that it did what it needed to do in the final eight minutes. That response was particularly pleasing coming off the loss to Northwest Rankin.
“If we would have done what we needed to do (against Northwest Rankin), we would have won, but we kind of melted a little bit there,” Baudoin said. “We all stepped up (against Starkville). I know the guards stepped up a lot and helped the posts out.”
Mattix’s 3-pointer from the wing with 1:29 remaining was one of three final daggers New Hope used to seal the deal. Mattix and Calmes also had layups as the Lady Trojans escaped the lady Yellow Jackets’ pressure for easy baskets.
“We are not there yet,” Calmes said. “We are not at our greatest potential, but we are working at it. We are a good team now, but we can be a great team.
“Everybody has to come together. We have to play Lady Trojan, show-up basketball.”
Williams, whose team lost to New Hope 73-65 on Nov. 9 in West Point, was pleased with her team’s performance. She felt Eryka Williams and Jones emerged to provide solid contributions on an afternoon in which Schaefer and Montgomery (16 points) provided their usual solid outings. She said the Lady Yellow Jackets will need more players to emerge and to gain confidence if they are to continue to come together to make a postseason push.
“Eryka did an outstanding job and Kelsey is a freshman, but her presence (inside) made a big difference for us,” Williams said. “We’re continuing to grow, but we have to come in with more energy. We have yet to come in with a lot of spunk about us. Once we get us some toughness and spunk about us, we’ll start to see a change in everything.”
New Hope has similar postseason dreams for 2014. A year after falling short to Canton in the Class 5A North State semifinals, Holman has tried to eliminate the word “almost” from her players’ vocabulary. She also has increased the intensity in practice in an effort to prevent the team from “melting” in late-game or pressure situations. On Friday, she liked how the team responded.
“I told them (Thursday), ‘I really feel like we are at a make-or-break point in our season and that time is running out and you are running out of opportunities to fight through this, so I really challenged them to find a way,” Holman said. “If they didn’t learn how to do it, they wouldn’t be able to achieve their goals for the season. To do great things, you are going to meet adversity down the line. Having D.J., who has pretty much carried us through tough times, struggle and to see the other ones step up on her off night was really great. It gave the other ones confidence to say even if D.J. Sanders is having a bad night we can still go out and beat a great team. I was very, very excited about their effort tonight.”
Follow Dispatch sports editor Adam Minichino on Twitter @ctsportseditor.
Adam Minichino is the former Sports Editor for The Commercial Dispatch.
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