Tori Calizo goes up between FAith Chamberlin and Kara Kline while Jessi Calizo looks on from the corner during Tuesday’s girls game at LCA. (Photos by James Costello)

WINONA LAKE — Both of Lakeland Christian’s basketball teams jumped on their guests early, and neither trailed on the way to convincing wins over Granger at home Tuesday night. The boys scored 10 unanswered points to start the early contest and weathered a second-half run on the way to the win in the opener, and the girls jumped out to double-digit leads in the first period and pretty much cruised in the nightcap.

LCA GIRLS 47, GRANGER 28

The Lady Cougars already owned a lopsided win over Granger back at their Cougar Classic in late December and knew exactly what to do in Tuesday’s rematch. They jumped out to a 16-4 first period lead and led wire-to-wire in their sixth win in the past seven games.

“The first half we knew what we needed to do. We played them before. We came out with that full court pressure, and they came out with confidence on offense and we were able to get a lead from the start, which was a good confidence-booster after the last couple poor shooting games that we’ve had,” said LCA girls coach Allison Kauffman.

Carly O’Hara looks for help while Kara Kline defends on the wing Tuesday.

Tori Calizo led all scorers with a double-double of 16 points and 13 rebounds to go with four steals and three assists in a strong all-around performance, while Anna Reimink put up 12 points with eight rebounds, four steals and three assists, and Jessi Calizo turned in nine points and five steals. Carl O’Hara put up another four points as seven Cougars made the scoring column opposite Granger.

“Definitely love seeing the spread out scoring tonight,” Kauffman said. “It was good to see. We’re challenging everybody to be a threat — look to be a shooter first — and some of the girls are really starting to pick it up and attack offensively. Anna, every night the offense goes through her whether she’s passing or she’s the one shooting. Tonight was her night where she was the one shooting, and she did an awesome job stepping up.”

As is often the case when things are going the Lady Cougars’ way, defense cued much of the team’s offense. The home team turned their guests over 25 times and parlayed those miscues into 23 points off turnovers.

“There are some games where we turn our steals into turnovers. Tonight they did a great job of capitalizing on our steals and turning them into points in the open court,” Kauffman explained. “We had some shots that we still didn’t finish, but we had girls there on the follow-up rebounds.”

Granger was paced by Kara Kline’s 14 points, eight rebounds and three steals.

LCA (12-8) will play at Caston Thursday.

Cameron Shepherd draws contact from Nathan Emswiller while David Rios and Eli Smith also defend Tuesday night.

LCA BOYS 48, GRANGER 33

Prior to tip-off in the opener of Tuesday’s girls/ boys doubleheader in Winona Lake, Cougars coach Chris Hohm challenged his players to win the first quarter by 10. Less than two-and-a-half minutes in, his players had already pushed the margin to double digits, jumping out to a 10-0 lead.

“The start was essential, especially tonight. I did not feel like we played a clean game, so that gave us that margin to kind of have a little wiggle room,” explained Hohm. “I did challenge our guys to try to win the first quarter by 10. So when you get up 10-0, that makes it a little easier to complete that goal. That was nice.”

LCA’s boys needed most of their early cushion to stay out front as Granger made a run in the third period. A 12-2 start to the second half pulled the visitors within a single possession as Tomas Garcia’s steal and wing triple brought the score to 31-28 at the 3:58 stop of the period, but the Cougars closed out the quarter 5-0 and had pushed that margin back out to double digits with Cameron Shepherd’s free throws at the 6:51 mark of the fourth period.

Trenton Parker works on the interior as Tomas Garcia and David Rios defend and Landon Paris looks on in back.

While Jake Harmon scored a game-high 16 points — knocking down a trio of 3-pointers to help his team out to early leads in the first period — Shepherd had a breakout game with 12 points, eight coming in the fourth period.

“He really stepped up for us. Kind of credit him for getting us the win,” said Hohm of Shepherd. “We were kind of struggling, kind of muddling along, and then he stepped up by following the game plan, being in the right spots and then just being aggressive taking the ball to the whole.”

Braxton Keller finished with nine points for LCA in a third near-double-digit output. Seven different players scored for the Cougars, who passed out 15 assists on 18 made shots in the win, including four helpers from Harmon.

“Against that 1-3-1, there’s not a lot of space to create your own shot. Usually they’re bringing two guys at you, but that means somebody is open,” Hohm said. “So we talked about how we should have a lot of assists tonight if we’re doing our job kind of penetrating gaps and then looking opposite down to the block or opposite wing. Those passes were there all day if we would’ve looked for it. When we looked for it, we looked good. Then when we decided to try to do our own thing, we didn’t look so good.”

Garcia scored 10, and Eli Smith finished with nine for Granger.

LCA (4-10) hosts Elkhart Christian Thursday night.