GHS boys, girls basketball teams set sights on CCS title
hopes
The benefit of Presidents’ Week break if you’re a Gilroy High student?
No school.
The “benefit” of Presidents’ Week break if you’re a Gilroy girls basketball player?
Daily two and a half hour practices.
“They’ve had it,” said Gilroy girls basketball coach Kari Williams, who made a commitment to maximizing practice time with her players on a break from school this week. “They’re chomping at the bit to get out of my practices and into a game.”
While their male counterparts on the Gilroy boys team prepared for and won their first-round game of the Division I Central Coast Section playoffs this week, the No. 2-seeded Gilroy girls basketball team had a first-round bye and got in some extra fine-tuning for No. 7 Carlmont (17-10). The Lady Mustangs (23-4) finally open their own postseason today at 4:30pm at Milpitas against the Scots in the CCS quarterfinals.
The practices may have been longer this week, but that didn’t bring down the intensity for the veteran group.
“There’s definitely more intensity. (Practice) is more serious,” said senior forward Jessica Groppe, one of six Gilroy seniors hoping to end their careers with a CCS title. “It’s the end and we want to go in and win.”
Said senior guard Katherine Hussey, who was named this season’s Tri-County Athletic League’s Most Valuable Player, “It means more now.”
Carlmont beat No. 10 Santa Teresa 58-44 Wednesday in the first round. The Scots, the defending Division I champion, don’t have much height and often run a perimeter-based offense.
“Sometimes they have all five players out and no one in the paint and they send cutters through,” said Williams, who watched Carlmont’s first-round game. “It’s similar to what Notre Dame (Salinas) used to do, but very different from what we’ve seen this season.”
In the halfcourt sets, Gilroy will have a definite height advantage, especially with Groppe down on the block. The senior averaged a double-double of 13.2 points and 11 rebounds in TCAL play. But if Williams has it her way, the Mustangs will force Carlmont to play an up-tempo game, which has helped Gilroy’s scoring average hover in the 60’s all season. The two teams had one common opponent this season, Monta Vista, whom both defeated. However, Gilroy won in a 32-point blowout while the Scots won by 11.
“I’ve told them to come out and take it like any other game, knowing full well it’s not,” Williams said. “But if we play
our game and start scoring from the inside-out, we’ll do fine.”
A handful of players who know not to treat today’s game like lightly are seniors Hussey (18 ppg, 8.8 rpg in TCAL) , point guard Kristen Campos (8.6 ppg, 6.0 apg in TCAL) and guard Marissa Nowakowski (4.8 ppg in TCAL). The three were sophomores two years ago when the last-seeded Mustangs upset No. 1 seed Alisal in the playoffs. Now the seniors are on the other end of the spectrum.
“We petitioned in (to the playoffs) and we barely got in. We just went in like we had nothing to lose,” Hussey recalled. “That’s exactly what we want to avoid this year.”
Gilroy Boys Face Team with even more height than their own
While the Gilroy girls will be facing a smaller team, the Gilroy boys squad will finally face a team with more height than its own today at 2:45pm when the No. 4 Mustangs (21-7) take on No. 5 Milpitas (20-6) at Independence. The Trojans’ three leading scorers guard Erik Rush (18.7 ppg), forward Adam Close (13.1 ppg) and center Spencer Ford (7.1 ppg) represent a triple threat of height. They stand 6-foot-4, 6-foot-6 and 6-foot-10, respectively.
To have the edge, Gilroy head coach Bud Ogden said the Mustangs will have to shoot better than they did against first-round opponent Andrew Hill and capitalize on fast break opportunities.
“We’ll have to run a little bit more. We do some good things when we run,” Ogden said. “But we have to have the ball to run so we’re going to have to rebound with the big guys.”
