GILMAN GIRLS BASKETBALL - Pirates push the pace, start year with 45-38 win

GILMAN GIRLS BASKETBALL

First basketball games of the season are rarely sharp and for the Gilman Pirates Tuesday, there were plenty of mistakes that will need to be ironed out as the schedule gets tougher.

But through one week of practice and, now one win, they feel like they’re going to have some fun with their newly-adopted fast approach to offense.

“I love it,” senior guard Kayleigh James said after her 15 points helped lead Gilman to a 45-38 non-conference win over visiting Edgar. “I think every single one of us, that’s what we’re born to do is just push the ball because we’re all fast and we all know how to do it.”

“It was a good one,” Gilman head coach Tammy Weir said. “We had 34 turnovers, but there were lots of possessions with the fastpaced game, so that doesn’t bother me. We forced 35 turnovers, with our defense and steals. Much improvement to be made here, but we’re off to a great start. The girls are picking this up and it will only get better from here.”

Offense came slowly for both teams in the first 14 minutes with Gilman holding just a 9-6 lead with four minutes left in the opening half. But things picked up after that, the lead went back and forth between the teams and it turned into an entertaining game in the second half.

The outcome wasn’t decided until James sank four straight free throws and Claire Drier and Raygen Soper each added one more as the Pirates scored the game’s last six points within the last 29.4 seconds.

With the lack of an inside presence, something the Pirates have had the past several years, Weir made the decision in the off-season that playing fast and aggressively was going to have to be the way to go this season.

While it wasn’t always pretty, the end result was what Gilman wanted Tuesday.

“I thought the girls did well with it,” Weir said. “That’s what this offense is for. With bigger teams we want to wear them out. We did. We wore them out.”

Gilman led 17-15 at halftime and 19-17 early in the second half after a short shot by Aubrey Steinbach. But Edgar’s Brandi Halvorsen sank back-to-back 3-point shots to give Edgar a 23-19 lead and Savannah Koepke added another bucket to give their Wildcats their largest lead at 25-19 with 14 minutes to play.

Pressing full-court is something the Pirates haven’t done much of in Weir’s coaching tenure. But once they got down by six, the Pirates got into the press and it provided a spark.

James got a steal and passed the ball up to Addy Vick for a layup. The Pirates got a stop and Drier scored off her own miss. James and Vick then both scored off of steals and just like that, Gilman led 27-25, forcing an Edgar timeout at the 12-minute mark.

Not long after that, Drier pulled down a defensive rebound and fired a long pass to James, who had snuck down court unnoticed and scored for a 29-25 lead. Those two seniors hooked up on long passes on a couple of occasions.

“It’s fun to see the court ahead of you and you’re like, ‘oh my gosh, Kayleigh’s open,’” Drier said. “I’d get the ball, there’s Kayleigh, throw it to her, points.”

“It catches the teams we play off-guard because we’ve always had a big in the middle,” James said. “Now that we’re pushing it up the court I feel every single team that knows us a little bit is going to be like, ‘whoa.’” A Drier steal and long pass to James led to an assist to Allie Olynick on a score that made it 35-29, but Edgar came back with a 7-0 spurt, keyed by another Halvorsen 3 and two scores by Emery Borchardt. Gilman freshman Reece Weir scored inside to put Gilman back on top with 3:30 left. Gilman got a key offensive rebound of a missed free throw by Weir and Drier made Edgar pay by hitting a mid-range jumper to make it 39-36. Jorja Knetter hit for Edgar at the 1:52 mark, making it a one-point game, but the Wildcats never scored again.

James hit two clutch free throws with 29.4 seconds to go and then she intercepted a short pass in the backcourt, drew another foul and hit two more.

“I’ve never been good with my free throws,” she said. “Every single practice from freshman year after practice I stay and I shoot free throws. It’s never worked for me in a game. But I’ve been practicing and I came up there and instead of saying, ‘oh boy here we go,’ I was like, ‘all right, we got it.’ I finally changed my mindset and I think I’m finally getting it down.”

Vick scored 10 points and had nine rebounds and four steals for Gilman. Drier finished with seven points, four steals and six rebounds. Olynick added six points and 13 rebounds. Weir chipped in with four points, six rebounds, four blocks and three assists. Steinbach had two points and Soper’s late free throw closed the scoring.

Natallya Radke led Edgar with 11 points, but all of those points came in the first half. Halvorsen’s three 3s gave her nine points.

The Pirates are at Flambeau tonight, Thursday, and at New Auburn Tuesday for 6 p.m. tip times as those teams do not have JV squads.

“One of the biggest things we’re just going to have to work on is control,” James said. “Sometimes on offense we kind of get a little too into the cluster of people. I think if we just learn to go for the gaps and control our offense more we’ll be OK.”

“We’ll figure out passing it around and what works for getting us open,” Drier said. “We had one play where we passed it around the whole court and we got a 3pointer. We missed it, but still we got an open shot. Going into the season we’re going to get that down.”