A quick, one-game summary to wrap up the first half of the season.

Last night CHS took on HSE, ranked #2 in class 4A. HSE has a junior who is committed to IU and just passed the 1000 career points mark last week. They also have a sophomore who already has multiple D1 offers and was taking visits to big-time schools as a freshman. A very good program from a huge suburban district. The sister school in their district lost in the state championship game last year.

In the JV game, L got a chance to play against one of her new, future travel teammates. However, we didn’t know that girl’s number until we saw a program, so L had no idea they guarded each other for much of the game until I told her on the ride home.

That was a decent matchup, although it was more L guarding H on one end while HSE’s point guards picked up L on the opposite end. H looks like a solid player. She didn’t do anything spectacular but made smart, fundamental plays all night. I wasn’t tracking her super closely, but she scored either 5 or 7.

L clearly took the confidence built playing so many varsity minutes Saturday into this game. She was as aggressive as she’s been all year, but also smartly aggressive. She took 12 total shots. She was 4–9 from 2, 2–3 from 3 and set a new career-high with 14 points. I give the 14 points an asterisk because the official signaled a two-point make on one of her 3’s, but the announcer gave her a three. Since HSE was up by 20 at the time, the scoreboard operator didn’t question it and also gave her three points. I thought the ref was wrong and it was indeed a 3, so I guess it evens out. Glad we didn’t win by one! She grabbed three rebounds and turned it over four times.

She finally realized, “Hey, I can drive people,” and got into the lane often. She looked a lot stronger with the ball than she has all season. Two of her turnovers came when she made drives and passed to teammates who weren’t looking for a pass. She also drew a couple fouls on drives. It wasn’t perfect, but it was exactly what she should be doing.

The only real negative was badly missing her two free throw attempts. I’m not sure what’s going on there. I told her after the game that a few weeks ago her form was perfect, even on her misses. Tuesday her mechanics were a mess and I could tell she was going to miss both before they left her hands.

She sat the entire fourth quarter of an 11-point loss.

The varsity game went exactly as expected. That IU commit went off early, scoring 19 before halftime on her way to 27 for the game. HSE started the game on a 28–0 run. Twenty. Eight. It was brutal. They were clearly much better on both ends of the court, but when CHS did get a good look, you could tell all of our girls were sped up, and missed right at the rim or wide-open jumpers. It made no difference in the outcome, but what ended up being a 35-point loss could have been a more respectable 25 if the girls had settled down just a little.

This game was my first experience with a running clock in a high school game. I didn’t realize that kicks in when the margin gets to 35 points. I’m not sure when HSE first got their lead over that line, but it was well into the 40s in the fourth quarter.

L checked in with 3:30 left in the third quarter and played straight-through until about the 3:00 mark of the fourth quarter. As the clock was running for most of that stretch it went pretty quick.

She got her first varsity assist, driving and kicking for a 3. She air-balled a wide-open 3 for the second-straight varsity game. But she used her confidence with the ball to drive and score when HSE still had three starters in, so that was cool.

Varsity dropped to 5–8, JV sit at 4–9.

After a long, busy, and tough seven weeks the girls finally have a little break. They have light practices today and tomorrow before taking five days off for Christmas. Their next game is the following weekend, when they have split JV-varsity games against big rival Bishop Chatard, where L’s best middle school buddy plays. She is excited not just to play BCHS, or her friend, or because a lot of family plan on coming to those games. Since the JV game is Friday and varsity Saturday, she won’t be on a playing time restriction either night. Hopefully she’s not too keyed up.

After that, varsity has a minimum of nine games left, depending on how the City tournament and sectionals go.