By Ryan Wilson
Editor
SPRINGFIELD — The Lincoln Land Community College women’s basketball team “won the lotto,” says head coach Gary Albert, and the Loggers went all the way to England to win that prize.
“We got lucky,” in signingEloise Sneddon, says Albert.
“Eloise is a very good shooter, and that is something every basketball team can use,” Albert said. “She has definitely exceeded expectations on the court.”
Sneddon is 5-foot-8-inch guard who attended Henley College (High School) in Salisbury, England. She is the only international player on the team.
Sneddon said she has always wanted to attend college in the United States to play basketball.
“I got an agent,” she said with her slight English accent. “They sent my information (a video of her basketball career in high school) out to various colleges, and then I got an e-mail from Gary.”
Sneddon will be joining a team of five returning Loggers and six freshmen.
The six freshmen are Cheyanne Cherry, Rochester; Sydney Jarrard, Athens; Rachel Alde, Pana; Abbey Schaeffer, Astoria; and Gretchen Hobbie, Hillsboro.
They will be teaming up with sophomore guards Breonna Lewis, Molly Sloman, Hannah Hergenrother, Kelsey Forsythe, and post player Haley Lockhart.
LLCC’s basketball team will be dealing with the graduation of Jessica Armour, who averaged the second most points on the team with 11.6.
Breonna Lewis, the Loggers’ leading scorer (13.2 points per game) and rebounder (6.4 rebounds per game) from last season, will be returning.
A lack of size could also be a problem for the Loggers, Albert says. The Loggers have only two players over 5 feet 10 inches tall: sophomore Hobbie (at 5 feet 11 inches) and Jarrard (at 6 feet).
“Big, physical teams could cause problems for us,” Albert said. “We’re more of a finesse team. We’re going to execute, we’re going to run the floor, but big, powerful teams may give us trouble, potentially.”
But Forsythe said she thinks the Loggers will be able to accommodate for their size deficiency after a couple of weeks of practice.
“We’ll work on what type of defense we have to play to help our inside players,” Albert added. “We’ll put more pressure on the ball further out just to make teams have to work to get the ball up.
“And we’ll just have to challenge the passing lanes and put pressure on the ball, so they (other teams) will have to really work hard to do what we want.”
Albert said he thinks Illinois Central College and Parkland College may be the Logger’s toughest opponents this season. Those teams, he said, have talented guards and post players.
ICC went 27-4 last season, while averaging 47.5 total rebounds per game and allowing its opponents to shoot 33 percent from the court. That was 11th and eighth best in the nation National Junior College Athletic Association, respectively.
Parkland, on the other hand, went 27-10 last year. It averaged 81.1 points per game (ninth in the nation) with a 46.6 field goal percentage per game (fourth in nation). It also averaged 19.4 assists per game, which was third in the nation.
“I think we have the potential to be pretty good,” Albert said. “We have a lot of athletic players. We’re not the biggest team around, but we’ve got speed, we can play good defense, we’ve got good shooters. It should be a pretty exciting season.”
Ryan Wilson can be reached at 217-786-2311 or [email protected].
