The Concordia College Lady Hornets held off a comeback at home to defeat the Wallace Community College Lady Patriots 54-53 in an exhibition game on Tuesday.

Eric Jackson, head women’s basketball coach of Concordia College Alabama, said his team played well, but there’s still much room for improvement.

“My girls, they fight hard. With two weeks of practice, I was semi-impressed,” Jackson said. “But we’ve got a lot of work to do because we have high standards to uphold. We’ve got to keep working.”

April Harper, head women’s basketball coach of Wallace Community College-Selma, said her team was slowed down by the Lady Hornets’ full-court press defense.

“I think we just came out with the first-game jitters. They played an aggressive defense on us and a lot of times we had a lot of unnecessary turnovers, a lot of missed layups going to the basket and not enough communication,” Harper said. “We just didn’t run our offense as well as we needed to tonight.”

Wallace trailed 30-19 at halftime, but fought back and took the lead in the second half when Takeela Mixon scored under the basket to give the Lady Patriots a 42-40 lead with 8:29 left to play.

Wallace pushed its lead to 51-44 until Concordia’s Ashley Fields hit a 3-pointer and Teresa Hill drained a mid-range shot to make the score 51-49 with 2:21 left in the game.

The Lady Hornets struck again with 51 seconds left to play, as Tierra Newell hit a 3-pointer that gave Concordia a 52-51 lead.

Newell added two free throws on the Lady Hornets’ next possession to make it 54-51, and Wallace’s Jameneshia Caver hit a pair of free throws to make it 54-53 with 32 seconds left.

Wallace had a chance to take the lead at the free throw line with seven seconds left, but missed both shots and three shot attempts after getting the rebound after missing at the charity stripe.