Lady Bobcats end week with a win

The Superior girls lost one game last week against Loyola and won a game against Alberton. On Tuesday night, the girls fell to Loyola, 14-60. On Thursday, they battled county rival Alberton in an away game and won, 76-43.

Loyola jumped out to an early lead in the first quarter, 19-4. After that, Superior couldn’t catch up. They only put four points on the board in the second and third quarters, adding two in the fourth. Loyola ran away from them in all of the quarters except the second, where defensively the Lady Cats held them to eight points.

“We did all right,” said Jeff Schultz, head coach. “In the first quarter we came out kind of shaky, but did a nice job against their half court press.”

Schultz said that Loyola is a tall team compared to Superior so it makes it had to put the pressure on them. He said that they can be hard to score on and unless they’re shooting well from the outside, they won’t get any points.

Schultz said that coming back after halftime the team just didn’t have a sense of urgency.

“At halftime, Loyola came out ready and I think that was the big difference. We didn’t come out with that same urgency and we weren’t looking to attack.”

Schultz said that for the most part he felt happy with the way the girls blocked out.

Cary Chamberlain, Ashley Blaylock and Kelsey Stenberg all scored four points apiece. Kaitlynn Koke added two.

After a rough loss to Loyola, the girls headed over to Alberton and were on fire. They jumped out to an early lead, 15-8, in the first quarter. The girls continued to dominate through the second quarter and had pulled away by more than ten points at halftime, 36-17.

The third quarter was also a huge quarter for the girls. They outscored Alberton 27-24 and went on to win the game.

“It was one good bounce after another with Loyola,” Schultz said.

Schultz admitted that the girls came out a little sloppy in the first quarter and weren’t taking care of the ball offensively. He said that when they cleaned that up and started to use their speed, they got in for some nice, easy layups.

“The Alberton girls are a tough bunch,” Schultz said. “You have to watch Dani Hanley closely and we also focused a lot on Jenna Rausch. She’s the kind if player you want on your team. She comes to work each time.”

It was a team effort when it came to scoring points though Chamberlain led with 19 for the game. Stenberg scored 16 points, Koke chipped in 14 and Malinda Steinebach added 15 and a few of those were a couple of nice three-pointers from the outside. Nicole Stroot rounded the total off with seven and Kinzie Cooper chipped in two.

This week, the girls are looking to play Darby on Friday and Troy on Saturday. Schultz said that against Darby they’re going to have to “take care of business” and noted they’ll be looking for the conference win.

He said Troy will come out strong and know what they want.

Schultz said that the girls aren’t looking too far down the road yet in terms of districts. They are just trying to improve and looking to play their game of basketball one game at a time.

“The girls are going a good job,” he said.