[07/19/02]Thursday’s Mississippi Association of Coaches basketball all-star game didn’t go the way Wanda Calvin hoped it would.

The former Warren Central star scored only two points on two shots grabbed one rebound, had one assist and sat on the bench for much of the second half as her North all-stars were hammered by the South, 78-51.

“We played good in practice, then when we got here we had too many I’ games going on. You can’t win games when you’ve got too many I’s’,” Calvin said. “It was too many who wanted the ball and not enough passing.”

The South never trailed and blew the game open by outscoring the North 28-6 in the second quarter to take a 45-18 halftime lead.

Four players scored in double figures for the South, led by 13 from Lacey Palomarez of Enterprise-Lincoln, and all but three players scored at least five points. Only one South player failed to score at all.

East Side’s Shant Stanford led the North with a game-high 23 points and seven rebounds. Monica Scott of South Pontotoc added eight points, all in the second half, for the North, while Latoria Keyes of West Jones and Kira Tillman of Poplarville each had 11 for the South. Jawanda Huggins also had 10 points for the South.

“Their post did a better job,” said North coach Shane Montgomery of Ripley. “They just dominated us on the boards, and we were flat.”

Part of the reason for the South’s inside dominance was height they had five players over 5-foot-10 compared to only two for the North and part of it was inexperience.

Calvin started in the post, where she rarely played for WC, and the South scored many of its points on the inside. On offense, Calvin rarely touched the ball as the North players usually drove or took their own shots instead of passing to teammates.

Calvin made one shot, a first-half layup, and missed a 3-pointer in the second half. She started the game, but only played four or five minutes in the second half.

She said she was frustrated by the lack of playing time, but moreso by the lack of opportunities.

“It was a new position for me, and I didn’t get the ball down there so I don’t know what I could’ve done with it,” she said. “I was feeling it, and when you’re feeling it you can do a lot of things with the ball.”

Few of the North players seemed to get a feel for the game except for a brief spurt in the third quarter.

The North started the third quarter with a 17-3 run to cut a 27-point deficit to 13, 48-35, with about 1 1/2 minutes to play in the quarter.

Tillman rallied the South, scoring six points and assisting on another basket in just over a minute to push the lead back to 59-37 at the end of the quarter.