Lady Longhorns hit the court after one of most successful seasons in ’19-20

    After finishing 2019-20 with one of the most successful seasons in the history of Chase County girls’ basketball, Coach Randy Longoria has one goal in mind—being there at the end again.
    Last year’s 18-4 season left the Lady Longhorns just one game out of the state tournament after their district final loss to Wahoo.
    As the 2020-21 season kicks off, Longoria said they’ve had good practices and preparation as they get ready for season opening games this week.
    Chase County opens tonight (Thursday) at home against Cozad, then travels to McCook on Friday.
    It will be a different season this year, with COVID-19 restrictions in place for youth sports, Longoria said.
    Most noticeable will be the lack of as many fans.
    Only limited family members of players will be allowed at Chase County home games. Most other schools will follow suit, as the Governor’s health directives limit attendance to families, at least through the end of the year.
    That’s only added to the busy start to any season, Longoria said.
    “It’s always really busy at the start of the season,” he said.
    Not quite as much as last  year, however, when Longoria spent his first year as CCS head girls’ basketball coach and the transition involved.
    He said there’s still a lot of review and teaching going on with the 15 on the roster, but it’s much smoother, especially with returning players.
    Fans won’t see a lot of major change in Chase County’s offense and defense, although he doesn’t expect to face the box-and-one as much.
    “Last year, with maybe one or two exceptions, we faced a box-and-one every game with Mallie” in the lineup, he said.
    He’s talking about Mallie McNair, who last year set the Chase County girls’ all-time scoring record as a senior, and now plays for UNK.
    While Longoria doesn’t expect to see that defense as much, they have prepared for it.
    Chase County will again use a 4-out offense for the most part, he said. Defensively, it will be similar with different half-court looks and presses as they work hard at being as strong as possible with their transition game.
    “We still have girls with those high gears,” he said. “We have a lot of speed returning.”
    He believes they’ll be strong in their overall defensive schemes, and his hope is they grow into a very strong transition team.
    One thing he’ll be expecting is for the returning players who’ll be on the court this season to up their scoring.
    “It’s going to be a matter of our primary starters picking up a few more points, and we’ll be successful,” he said.
    For the opening week, Longoria will start seniors Alexis Richmond and Kora Weiss, juniors Jerzee Milner and Jordan Jablonski and sophomore Bryn McNair.
    Primary subs will be junior Morgan Peterson and sophomore Kaylie Lotspeich.
    Longoria said the starters and subs are a fluid situation.
    “As kids improve the starters could change,” but this is the starting group for this week, he said.
    He expects to use seven to eight players in the bulk of the games.
    A big blow to what was expected to be the starting lineup was the loss of sophomore Gisselle Acuna, who suffered a major knee injury in volleyball that will take her out of basketball entirely this season.
    “We all know injuries are a part of athletics. Losing Gisselle was a big hit to absorb. I feel so bad for her because she is such a great person,” he said.
    A silver lining is that she’ll have two more years to play, he said.
    After winning the SPVA tournament last year for the first time since 1983, Longoria expects another competitive conference tournament in January.
    They’ll return to the same C1-11 subdistrict as last year with Hershey, Cozad and Gothenburg.