Baskets rained like water for the Lady Bruins in their Sullivan basketball Tournament against Salem High School, Mon. Dec. 11. The Bruins, scoring an incredulous 46 points over Salem, dominated every aspect of the game, kept their pace and took home a dominating win with a final score of 75-26.
Senior guard Katey Klucking, with a total of 16 points, found Salem’s ‘2-3 defensive zone‘ to be easily read and circumvented. By understanding their defensive breakdown, Klucking and her team strang passes to the outside of the three point line for a plethora of successful baskets.
“They played a 2-3 zone the entire game,” Klucking said. “It was easy to find our three point shooters. Salem then figured out who the shooters were and then we were able to focus on the high post and get easy layups. We capitalized on our ability to switch our ways of scoring.”
Likewise, head coach Jill Nagel analytically broke down the rivals offense, defense and moral. As with every game, however, Nagel looks to find flaws in her team’s performance and to continue the positive trend of general growth.
“Offensive efficiency has been a key we’ve been stressing and focusing upon,” Nagel said. “Additionally, [this game our] box outs and rebounds [where a strength].”
Senior guard Payton Mcallister, although happy with her team’s victory, hopes to correct one offensive aspect of their game.
“We did very well [tonight] but there was one thing we needed to fix,” Mcallister said. “We need to [work on] free throws. Although we didn’t need them this game, they will be very important in the future.”
Finally, in reflection of the game holistically, Klucking looked back at what kept the opponents score so far from their own.
“We pressed a lot and we had [around] 13 steals which is nice. We also had a lot of deflections which force[d] them to restart their offense,” Klucking said. “We then switched to a couple of different [defensive] zone formations and it worked really well. It made the other team be on their toes.”