EDWARDSVILLE – It was also a historic night for the Kahoks, as senior forward Talesha Gilmore hit a basket in the lane with 6:45 left in the fourth quarter, becoming the third Collinsville player to reach 1,500 points in her career. Gilmore shortly added a three to give her 10 points for the night, and went to 1,504 points in four-year career.
It was indeed a historic night for Gilmore to reach her milestone, and Kahok coach Coin Moore was very proud of her and her accomplishment.
“She’s definitely happy,” Moore said. “We talked about it at halftime, put ourselves in position to win the basketball game; that was obviously goal number one. Goal number two was seeing her succeed as an individual, which she came out, and got a couple of points against a tough team, so I’m definitely happy for her. But at the same time, I think we showed we can play with people for a half, we just had that numbers game kind of jump up behind us, and then, we just kind of got outworked in the second half. But give credit to Edwardsville. You have to give credit to Talesha for getting to 1,500 points, we should be proud of her.”
Collinsville has been battling through injuries most of the season, but spirits on the team remain high.
“I would say our girls know we care about them,” Moore said, “they care about us. They’ll do about anything for us. Give credit to Edwardsville, they played hard. But, it’s just frustrating when you feel so close, and then, when you look at the score at the end of the game, it’s really not that close.”
The Tigers went on their run to start the second half, and Moore gave the Tigers tremendous credit.
“Anybody from this area knows that Edwardsville’s a winning tradition of winning basketball teams,” Moore said. “When they kind of go on those runs, it just like you feel here it goes again. But we just kind of talked to them in the locker room after the game about it. At some point in your life, you’ve just got to toughen up and stop that.
“Whether it’s basketball, a different sport, a job, whatever it is, life, school, You’ve just got to eventually put your foot down and try to stop something, and unfortunately, we just didn’t do that tonight. But, hopefully, we’ll have another chance in the regionals, and show everybody around here we can play a little bit.”
