Lopsided Second Quarter Sees Granite City Get Past Explorers

Jan 9, 2026 1:42 PM

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ALTON – The Granite City High School girls basketball team traveled to Alton on Thursday night to take on the Marquette Catholic Explorers in non-conference action.

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After a slow start, Granite City came back to win a low-scoring affair 30-23.

The Warriors have now won six of their last seven games and improved to 12-4 on the year. Marquette dropped to 10-5.

“The girls have responded to coaching all year,” Granite head coach Ron Twitchell said. “It’s been a long time since Granite City girls [basketball] has been successful. I’m really proud of them because they take our gameplan and really try to execute it.”

Things did not go according to plan for the Warriors in the beginning.

Marquette opened the game on a 7-2 run thanks to a basket from Laila Davis, two free throws from Allie Weiner, and a three-pointer from Caylee Rhodes.

Weiner was recognized prior to the game for her recent career milestone. Back on Wednesday, January 7, she scored eight points in a 70-18 rout over Christ Our Rock Lutheran.

Those eight points put her above 1,000 career points, becoming just the seventh player in program history to do so.

“It’s hard to score 1,000 points,” her head coach Whitney Sykes-Rogers said. “You pretty much have to be on varsity, on the court, from day one of your freshman year. She’s been a pinnacle part of our team for four years. And she’s just got better at the little things. She might not score all the time, but she plays defense, she’s our leading rebounder; it’s things like that that you can’t replace.”

Granite City flipped the script and went on a 15-point run to close the first quarter and open the second.

Jailynn Rae Woods sank two free throws before another layup to cut the deficit to 7-6 after the first quarter. Taliyah Sykes scored the first basket of the second quarter to put her team ahead at 8-7.

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The Warriors never lost the lead after that.

Granite outscored the Explorers 9-0 in the second quarter, taking a sizeable halftime lead at 15-7. The Warriors led 23-17 after three quarters.

Marquette tried to stage a rally, opening the final frame on a 6-2 run to cut the lead to 25-23, forcing Granite into a full timeout with just under four minutes left in the game.

But the Warriors finished the game on a 5-0 run to get to the final, 30-23.

“We just turned it over too much,” Sykes-Rogers said. “That goes with a little bit of inexperience for some of the kids that were on the court. We were missing one of our players (Delaney Ortman), and she’s our second leading scorer. And that just hurt.”

“Offensively, I feel like those are fixable things,” she continued. “Defensively, I’m ecstatic. We gave up 30 points; there’s nothing I can tell the kids to say you can play any harder than that. I think once we have our whole team together, our offense will come back. That’s our biggest issue all year, offense inconsistency.”

Tuesday night was the fewest points Marquette has scored this season.

Things were clicking toward the end of November, heading into December for Marquette. It opened the season to a 7-2 mark but has since gone 3-3 in their last six games.

In comparison, Granite has won nine out of its last 11 games.

“Sometimes we start slow, but these girls have been really good at persevering all year,” Twitchell said.

“You can’t help but be proud of them and just in my heart, I feel good for them, because things have been kind of down for a while, so, I’m happy for them.”

Rae Woods led all scorers with 13 points. Her teammate Tyhlee Simms scored eight points, Taliyah Sykes scored four, and Malone Grady and Megan Sykes each scored two points.

Davis led Marquette with 11 points while Weiner dropped in seven points. They each had seven rebounds on the night as well. The Explorers outrebounded Granite 31-21.