“It felt like we did a great job pressuring,” girls varsity basketball head coach Pat Deegan said. “We forced them to take shots out of their range.”
The defensive pressure kept Marshall’s top scorers off the board, but the Highlanders struggled getting going offensively, especially in the first half. The impressive effort from the Highlanders on both ends of the ball, with tenacious rebounding giving McLean several second chance points, kept the Highlanders in the lead throughout the game.
“We were really aggressive on offense and defense, just playing our game,” senior guard Tatum Olson said. “They weren’t super strong with the ball, so just pressuring and getting steals off of that and making transition plays was key.”
The Highlanders will work to improve their offensive output in preparation for an upcoming tournament in Tampa, Florida. The team especially needs to learn and accept the complexities of the sport as they progress.
“The big thing is getting 13 kids to learn the variability of basketball, that you should go this way or she might go that way,” Deegan said. “It’s just learning the nuances and intricacies of working together with two or three people on the court.”
Although the Highlanders won this time, lousy passes, turnovers and a series of miscues displayed just how much the offense needs to improve.
“We want to improve turnovers because we had a lot of them,” Olson said. “It was better than the last two games, but we want to get them down.”
The Highlanders head to Madison on Dec. 17, looking to win and further improve. The season is far from over and there is a lot of time to enhance their game.
“We got the win but it’s not over yet, we need to keep that mentality,” Olson said. “ It’s moving on to the next one and learning from the last.”
