Cards clamp down on ‘Cats season
Shields keeps Guden in check
By Casey Krautkramer
The old adage defense wins championships often holds true in sports.
Wausau Newman senior guard Lauren Shields clung to Edgar star junior guard Makenna Guden, by not giving her any open outside shots, to help the Cardinals down the Wildcats, 49-35, in a WIAA Division 5 sectional semifinal on Thursday at Mosinee High School.
Guden normally averages 20 points per game, but Shields held her to only 12. No other Edgar player came close to scoring in double digits against the Cardinals.
Edgar head coach Betty Urmanski said she and her assistants added more dimenions to the team’s playbook, in an attempt to get players open, during practices in the week leading up to the playoff matchup against Newman.
For example, Urmanski deployed an offensive strategy for whichever post player was being guarded by Newman senior Jadelyn Ganski. Ganski had a monster game with 25 points, seven rebounds, four assists and three blocks.
“We tried to recognize who Jadelyn was guarding and have that girl come out to the perimeter to open things up for us inside, but our girls would only remember this for one or two rotations,” she said. All of a sudden our girl who is comfortable playing near the basket would kind of slide back into there within our offense. We worked on some different offensive sets during the week anticipating some of these things would happen in our game against Newman, but you can’t throw things like that in at this point in the season and expect players to remember them; they go back to what they know and that’s what they did.”
Urmanski described after her team’s loss what Guden could’ve done better to get open against a lockdown defenser like Shields.
“She needs to set screens and then look to see if her defender is helping, and if she is helping then she needs to flare off of that,” she said. “If she’s not helping, then she needs to turn around and set another screen. We talked about this and worked on it this week in practice, but again, when you put these plays into our offense one week before a game, kids are kids and they go back to what they know and are comfortable with.”
Guden reached the 1,000 career point milestone in only her junior season this year. She has a good chance to become the all-time leading scorer in Edgar girls basketball, and possibly overall among Wildcat boys and girls, next season before she graduates high school.
Even with how good Guden played this season, she certainly must realize after her team’s playoff defeat to Newman she needs to continue improving her basketball skills in the offseason. She needs to work at being able to get herself open for outside shots against very good defensive teams, while she continues to work on refining her stepback shot.
Despite the team’s loss to Newman, Edgar senior forward Ashton Mohr was pleased with how her team’s overall play in her final high school season. Edgar finshed this season with an 18-8 overall record.
“Myself and our team’s other three senior players, Marissa Ellenbecker, Teresa Hackel and Kailee Davis, pushed each other to improve during practices and to motivate the younger players on our team to do better this season,” Mohr said.
She is the daughter of Scott and Nicole Mohr, and she plans to study engineering in the United States Air Force after she graduates from Edgar High School this spring.
Newman also beat Oneida Nation, 57-48, in a WIAA Division 5 sectional championship on Saturday night at Bowler High School. Newman, 22-4, now plays undefeated Black Hawk, 26-0, in a state semifinal game at 9:05 a.m. this Friday, March 13, at the Resch Center in Green Bay.
Meanwhile, there’s plenty of reasons for coach Urmanski to be optimistic about her team’s potential next season.
Several young and talented Wildcat players will return to the team, which won a WIAA Division 5 regional championship this season. Those players consist of freshmen Reagan Borchardt and Morgan Schnelle; sophomores Skylee Manecke, Malia Hoesly, Maria Hackel, Karlin Lipinski and Desirae Rausch and juniors Guden and Gabriella Keim.
