Lady Cats celebrate their season

After a journey that took them to the divisional tournament, Superior girls basketball coach Jeff Schultz said that overall, he felt they came away with a successful season.

“We could see improvement on a daily basis and that shows the girls were working hard. They came to practice every day ready to work,” Schultz said.

The season couldn’t have come quickly enough for the girls. Despite playing a full season over the summer, Schultz said at the beginning of the season that it felt like it took forever for the season to finally roll around.

The Superior Lady Cats had a tough opening schedule this weekend, but Schultz said last week that he wouldn’t have it any other way as it would give them a real look at where they were.

The girls started out with a game against Charlo and they nearly clenched a victory. They lost by a mere five points, 27-32. The girls found themselves in another action-packed, fast paced game with a matchup against St. Ignatius, losing 54-63.

After two losses during the first week of games, the girls found themselves winning the next week. Twenty-nine seemed to be a magic number for the Lady Cats, who beat both Darby and Troy by 29 points.

Schultz said that the plan was to keep working on the offense and playing a half court game as they weren’t going to always be able to rely on their speed.

“We’ve kind of depended on our speed and getting away and running on other teams. But some of the teams that we have up ahead won’t allow us to do that,” Schultz said.

The girls faced a tough opponent in Florence the first week of January. Playing Florence, the Superior girls found themselves under a lot of pressure. Florence had a huge lead at halftime, 31-18, and led going into the fourth quarter, 46-24.

“We didn’t do as well against Florence,” Schultz said. “They came out with an in-your-face full court press and the girls panicked a bit. It’s mainly my fault for not having the girls prepared. Florence’s coach did a nice job in having his girls ready and I didn’t have our girls ready.”

Schultz said that he thought the girls played hard despite the nature of the game. He said that they did things well on the defensive side, but struggled offensively.

“But again, it was my job to get them ready,” Schultz said.

Schultz said the team came into the season with some inexperience and young players, two things that could give a team a rough go around during the season, but the girls weren’t letting that stop them and by the second half of the season, Schultz said that he felt like he had a team of veterans.

“We have a fairly young and inexperienced team, but we played a lot over the summer and have five returning starters. I think that in the first couple of games our inexperience showed, but since then I think the girls have done an outstanding job and have played like veterans.”

By the time districts rolled around, the girls were ready to show what they could do. They ended up meeting season rival Valley Christian in the consolation game for third place.

The Lady Cats would square off against Valley again on Saturday in the consolation game.

From the get-go, Superior was behind. They were only down by two after the first quarter, 7-9, but Valley Christian put the pressure on in the second quarter and outscored the Lady Cats, 13-4. They were behind by 11 points going into halftime, 11-22.

With just under seven minutes left in the third, Valley strengthened their lead with two free throws, 25-11. Halfway through, the Lady Cats were still down, 27-15. But Superior took control of the game from there and Valley didn’t score again.

Cary Chamberlain scored on four shots to lead Superior as they caught fire. In the fourth quarter, the girls managed to tie the game 27-27 with just a 1:36 left to play. Kaitlynn Koke hit two crucial free throws with 3.3 seconds on the clock to tip the game in their favor before time ran out giving them the last word, so to speak.

“We placed a lock-down defense in the second quarter,” Schultz said. “And Koke gave us our first lead of the entire game there at the end. It was a close battle.”

The girls finished the district tournament in third place.

“It was huge,” Schultz said. “It was a total team victory. If anybody had not brought their A-game, it would have hurt us.”

It was a loss against Big Fork the following weekend at divisionals that ended the season for the girls, but Schultz felt that the girls had a great season and had nothing to hang their heads about.

He said that for him one of the proudest moments was when they got the opportunity to go to divisionals by going through the back door at districts. Outside of that, he said that a lot of it is about the journey they take as a team.

“The girls came away with a lot of experience,” Schultz said. “And a lot of them will be returning next year.”