Coach reflects on girls’ basketball season; much experience back next year

    As Coach Mark Bottom reflects on the 2017-18 girls’ basketball season, there are some “what ifs?”
    What if senior Lauren Gockley hadn’t broken her foot late in the season?
    What if the team hadn’t been hit hard by the flu affecting player numbers the last five games?
    What if sophomore Madison Schuller hadn’t suffered a season-ending injury in December?
    All those factors forced a real struggle for the team from the end of January to the post-season, Bottom said.
    He believes if not for those factors, the Lady Longhorns would have finished with a better record than the 12-11 they tallied this season.
    “We were really playing well down the stretch,” Bottom noted.
    But then the flu hit hard and Gockley was hurt in the Hershey game Jan. 27. After that, Chase County didn’t have its full five starters on the floor together again.
    Unfortunately in that five-game stretch, they had some tough teams on the schedule, too, and lost four of those last five.
    In that stretch, however, Chase County pulled in an overtime win against Hershey, who had just won the SPVA Tournament a week earlier.
    While the end of the season went the way it did, Bottom also sees some positives.
    Some of their sophomore subs, especially Maddie Brown and Ashley Bubak, earned some valuable varsity playing time, “and really stepped up,” he said.
    “That’s going to benefit us later,” he added.
    Looking to next season, Bottom said they’ll have just one senior in Allison Owings, but a lot of good sophomore (next year’s juniors) experience back.
    “There is a lot of strength in that class and they played a lot of varsity this year,” he said.
    He also sees some good talent in this year’s freshman class, and it looks like eight to 10 will be joining the squad next year as freshmen.
    “I’m expecting some good athletes and hard workers in that freshman group,” he said.
    Three of the four graduating seniors were starters this season—Ragan Nickless, Andrea Page and Gockley. The team will also lose senior Whitney Hopp.
    Bottom said he saw the most improvement this season in the effectiveness of his team’s half court offense.
    While they didn’t play as much man-to-man defense as last year’s team, they continued to improve their ability in that aspect of the game, he said.
    “We will need to keep building on those two areas. We need to be more versatile and mix it up more on defense,” he said.
    He’s also looking for more girls to be offensive threats. Leading scorer Mallie McNair returns as a junior next year, and averaged 13.8 points a game. The next two leading scorers, Nickless (8.6 avg) and Gockley (7.3 avg), will graduate.
    He said to get there, players will need to work on shooting, dribbling and ball handling in the off-season.
    He believes he has a number of players who can up their scoring numbers.
    It will also be important to develop some leadership in the upperclassmen, he said.

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