Shiver crosses 1K for career as Lady Trojans win big

By: RHETT MANUEL
Sports Editor
VILLE PLATTE – Sacred Heart Lady Trojans head coach Craig Whittington wanted to get the hoopla of it done early on.
As quickly as possible if you will.
But with senior guard and LSU-Eunice signee Kali Shiver closing in on 1,000 career points for the Blue and Gold, there was no denying what the story of Tuesday night’s 73-32 win over St. Joseph-Plaucheville was.
Whittington made it easy for Shiver. Using the uptempo style he’s introduced to the Lady Trojans this season, Shiver scored 11 points in a 28-point opening quarter and crossed the millennial threshold with 7:20 left in the first half.
Timeout called. Milestone accomplished. Celebration ensued.
“I’m extremely proud of Kali,” Whittington said. “Our goal was to get her in transition down the floor, create for her and let her shoot the ball on the perimeter. I thought she did a good job of both.
“She’ll have this accomplishment for the rest of her life. It was a good night for us offensively to get 73 points in a game.”
Shiver’s 25-point performance that put her at 1,013 points for her career. She had 20 of those points by halftime but was far from the lone bright spot for the Lady Trojans.
“This has been one of my biggest accomplishments (so far),” Shiver said. “I’ve wanted this goal since middle school and I’m so happy I got to do this with my teammates.”
They led by 31 points at the break and barely broke a sweat after St. Joe grabbed an early 3-2 lead. A 19-0 run by Sacred Heart effectively put the game out of reach after that.
So much of that was Whittington’s tempo he brought with him that has paid dividends for a team that was used to playing close game after close game last season.
“The first thing I told them was that we were going to play a faster-paced game,” Whittington said. “One of my goals was to get us to that point where we didn’t have to win 42-39 games.”
“It’s a lot of non-stop running,” Shiver said. “But it’s a whole different ball game than last year. Last year, we sat back and did our own thing. But, now we help out our teammates. You need to be everywhere and be a generous person. It’s been so fun.”

Boys
St. Joe 52,
Sacred Heart 45
The Trojans had a big boost in Hayden Deshotel’s return from an eye injury and he responded in dropping a team-high 18 points.
But defensively, Sacred Heart had issues keeping up with St. Joe in the first half as the Eagles took a 33-21 lead into the locker room.
Most of St. Joe’s offense came from Bo Pilgreen, who scored a game-high 25 points, including 11 in the second period alone.
St. Joe stretched the halftime lead in the third period when Sacred Heart put its worst offensive quarter up of the game coming out of the locker room.
That seven-point third quarter saw the Trojans slide further behind and by the time Sacred Heart found itself with a 17-point fourth quarter it was a little too late.
Deshotel had a strong running buddy in Karson Vidrine, who was the only other Trojan in double-figures with 15 points.
Where they found issues, though, was the lack of production through the rest of the lineup. While five other Trojans found themselves in the scorebook, none of them scored more than three points.