Tag: CHS (Page 2 of 2)

Time to catch up with L’s exploits on the hardwood.

Two Fridays ago we traveled to North Vernon, IN, about 90 minutes south, nearly all the way to Louisville. The varsity team was playing the #14 team in the state, which features a senior who signed with Michigan State earlier this month. She averaged 22 & 12 as a junior and is ranked in the top 60 in the country. We weren’t sure if she was the one good player down there, or just a sign of a good program, so had no idea what to expect from their JV squad.

It ended up being a super entertaining and fun game, at least as much as a JV game with dodgy offense and indifferent defense can be. It was tied after one quarter, we trailed by two at halftime, led by four at the end of three, and ended up losing by two. We had a six-point lead early in the fourth quarter and missed a couple chances to extend. Our best inside player only played the first quarter so she would be eligible for the entire varsity game, and her absence really hurt us on the boards.[1]

L played pretty well. She scored nine points on 4–7 shooting, hitting two long jumpers. She had a rebound, three assists, two steals, and two turnovers. She played roughly 25 of the 28 minutes. She made a free throw with two seconds left to cut the margin to two, then intentionally missed the second but we couldn’t get the rebound to try to tie.

The funniest aspect of the night was how the PA announcer kept saying L’s name wrong. When he introduced the starting lineups, he said our last name in the way people have been mispronouncing it my whole life, but which makes no sense to me. There’s no U in our name, but people are always adding it.

Then, once L started hitting baskets, the announcer called her “Lisa.”

Lisa.

Multiple times.

She heard him because she was shaking her head and laughing after one of her makes.

I thought about being That Dad and going down to correct the guy working the mic. But I figured if he was imagining letters in both her first and last names, he probably either wouldn’t remember my corrections or would be so flustered it would make things worse for the entire team.

Our varsity lost by 17 and it was never close. The Michigan State recruit scored 17 and had over 10 rebounds. She is a nice player. The real issue was letting a sophomore score 23. I guess it is more than a one-girl program. You let two kids combine for 40 points in a high school game and you’re probably going to lose.

The Tuesday before Thanksgiving we were at Warren Central for a boy-girl JV doubleheader. This is significant since L has a boyfriend these days, and he’s on the boy’s team, so the assumption was we’d watch her game then hang around to watch his.

Only wrinkle in that plan was the Warren girls smacked the Irish around pretty good. We were down 12 at the end of the first quarter, and down as many as 19 multiple times. We ended up losing by nine but it’s not like we went on some big run.

L had a truly rough night. She played 24 minutes and did not score, taking just two shots. She did have a lifetime-high six rebounds, but balanced that with seven turnovers. That was indicative of the entire team: any positives were outweighed by bigger negatives.

I thought she actually played fantastic defense. She just kept checking girls who could make varsity-level shots. One of her best defensive possessions of the game, in which she had a girl completely locked up on three different moves, ended with that girl hitting a step-back jumper from 18 feet. I had to remind her later sometimes you do everything right and the other girl just hits a great shot. You can’t let the result get you down.

The coaches were on the entire team pretty hard, and jumped on L specifically a few times. She’s never really had to deal with coaches like that, and it has been a tough transition. Tuesday it was a little overwhelming for her. I don’t think it helped that both of her sisters were in attendance and she put extra pressure on herself that night. There were some tears after the game. We hung around for a few minutes of the boys game, but she wanted to get the hell out of the gym pretty quickly. I don’t blame her.

Saturday was a super doubleheader, with both the boys and girls playing JV/varsity double-dips against a school that traveled from down near Louisville. The schedule had the girls varsity playing first in the main gym followed by boys varsity, while in the auxiliary gym the boys JV played first followed by the girls.

The girls varsity game was faaaaantasic, with the teams trading leads all night, a few crazy-curious calls by one specific ref, and a super exciting final minute. With the game tied, CHS went up on a basket by our senior center with about 20 seconds left. JHS came down and got a running layup to tie with about four seconds left. After a timeout, CHS inbounded to our best perimeter player, who fumbled the ball, took a couple dribbles to half court, and let it fly. Swish, ballgame.

Last second shot by @JaedaWilson2025 breaks the tie! @cathedralgbb wins ☘️🏀☘️🏀 @gochsathletics @GoCathedral pic.twitter.com/BEDSqlVdMr

— Lacey Nix (@LaceyNix) November 26, 2023

If you watch the video closely you might recognize a guy in a green shirt in the upper row who called the basket good before most of the folks.

This was our first time doing the reverse schedule thing, so we hustled up to the aux gym thinking the JV game might be about to start. Nope, everything was on hold and the warmup clock hadn’t even started yet. Made sense since the JV coaches were both on the varsity benches, along with several girls from both teams who were double-rostered. We’ll know better for next time.

JV got a relatively easy eight-point win. They were up by 12–19 almost the entire night and got sloppy in the final minutes of the game. L was solid. Her stats weren’t gaudy – she made one shot, hit one free throw, had one rebound, one assist, one steal, and two turnovers – but she was much more steady than she had been the previous Tuesday. She again played 24–25 minutes.

CHS swept the boys games, too, so it was a fun night all around and she was in a much better mood on that ride home.

The girls JV and varsity are both 2–3 on the season now.

Two games this week, and five over the next 12 days.

Welcome to the first post in a new, recurring series in these parts. L started her high school basketball career Tuesday night, and I think that deserves a clearly identified set of entries to document her adventures.

The season opener was against the Jesuit school not too far from our house, BPHS. We have good friends who have a son who goes there and it was fun to see him working as a team manager when we walked in. He was in C’s class at St P’s, I coached him in soccer a couple times, and we are still close with his parents. He ran over and said hello and gave C a hug, while his mom showed up later and sat with us.

When we got to our seats L was trying to get my attention from across the court as they warmed up. She was saying something with exaggerated mouth movements. At first I wondered if she was telling me she forgot her water bottle, which she did for their scrimmage two weeks ago. But C caught on to what she was saying quicker, “Oh, she’s starting!” That was my expectation, but I could tell L was excited about it, so I gave her a big thumbs up.

What gets a thumbs down, though, was BPHS’ sound system not working. They lined the teams up to announce starters, paused for a few minutes, and when they couldn’t get the microphone to work scrapped introductions. So we were robbed of hearing her name called before her first high school game. I will hold this against BPHS as long as I live.

On to the game. CHS won the tip, L got the ball, and she sat up the offense. Keep in mind every day when I pick her up from practice she complains how they only work on defense and haven’t done anything on offense. I figured this was a slight exaggeration, but I’m not there. Anyway, she dribbled to the right wing, stopped, waited for a cutter who wasn’t sure what to do, and tried to perform one of the worst dribble handoffs I’ve ever seen. The girl guarding L ripped the ball away and headed up court. One play, one turnover. Not the start I was hoping for.

But L raced back and blocked that girl’s shot! She doesn’t get a lot of blocks so that was a solid recovery.

The whole game had a ragged quality like that play. Lots of tossing and hoping instead of smart passes on offense. BPHS was very physical on defense – I wish they handed out programs so I could see how many of their girls were sophomores and juniors – and any half-assed offense by CHS was blown up. The Braves led by five after the first quarter, seven at halftime, and nine at the end of the third quarter.

BPHS hit the first shot of the fourth quarter to go up 11. The key to their lead was hitting four threes to CHS’ zero. That math adds up, I double-checked.

With about four minutes left it was still a nine-point game. Then something happened, I’m not sure what, and the Irish started playing better offense and getting stops on the other end.

With just under 2:00 left we trailed by five and were inbounding under our own basket, L throwing the ball in. The first attempt got blown up, as L missed an open cutter then tried to force it to our tallest girl inside. A loose ball went off the defense and we got another chance. This time L hit our center, a sophomore from St P’s, and T hit the shot. Down three.

After forcing a five-second call on defense, we had a possession that was truly crazy. It was a wild swing of bad passes, near steals, and a couple terrible shots with offensive rebounds sprinkled in. Eventually L got the ball on the baseline with a lane to the hoop. She drove, flipped it up-and-in, and the margin was down to one with under 30 seconds left.

On the next BPHS possession we got a steal and seemed to have an open layup to take the lead. Only our girl got completely blown up by three defenders. The referee indicated that one of the girls got all ball, which she probably did, but ignored the other two who absolutely wiped our girl out.

I started laughing. I remember well from my sports writing years that refs in JV games do everything they can to get those games over shortly after 7:00 so the varsity girls can have 20 minutes of warmups and then start right at 7:30, even if that means swallowing their whistles on close plays. It was already after 7:10 and the refs knew their job was to avoid overtime.

So CHS is inbounding under our own basket again. We called a timeout and the varsity coach jumped into the huddle to draw something up. It ended up being the same play we had run the last two attempts, only with a couple girls flipped to new spots. L found her old Panther pal again, T hit the contested shot, and we were up one with :07 left. Pandemonium on our side!

After a timeout, BPHS got a relatively open look near the rim by their strongest player. She had to rush her shot, it didn’t hit any rim, and our girls ran around screaming like they had won City when the buzzer sounded.

An exciting and entertaining if not aesthetically pleasing game.

That layup was L’s only basket of the game, going 1–5 from the floor. She also had 2 rebounds, 3 assists, 2 steals, 2 turnovers, that one block, and one foul. I wasn’t tracking minutes but she played around 20 minutes of the 24-minute game. She, like all of her teammates, struggled on offense. She looked nervous early and never seemed to get comfortable. But her defense was really solid. I’ll get more into that in a minute.

After she came back from the locker room and found us she said she played terrible, “I had so many turnovers!” To be fair she made some bad passes that got knocked around before we re-gained possession that didn’t count as official turnovers. But I pointed out she also had three assists and played solid defense. When we got home I told her how good her defense was and she said “That’s the best defense I’ve ever played.” Again, more on that in just a sec. She also told us how nervous she was when the game started, which is unusual for her.

The varsity game was also very entertaining. CHS got up 11 early, but BPHS steadily clawed back into it. The Irish led by one at halftime, trailed by one going into the fourth, and were down by three midway through the quarter. We went on a 10–0 run to take the lead and ended up winning by eight. Our best player, a junior shooting guard, had 24 points. When I told L that this morning she said, “You see what I have to guard every day in practice? She is so good.” I think having to try to slow J down in practice has tightened up L’s defensive game. J also, apparently, guards the hell out of L, so maybe once her nerves calm down and the team is running better team offense, that will provide some benefits in L’s game, too.

Game one in the books, both JV and varsity are 1–0. Not a great performance by L, but she played her best in the game’s biggest minutes. It wasn’t bad for her first high school game.

We have another road game on Thursday, but I will be in Florida that night so no breakdown for it. The girls have a week off before their third game, so your next update will come Thanksgiving week. I promise they won’t all be this long. Unless the games are good enough to warrant 1000-plus words, of course!