EHS girls hope to stay on recent roll
Friday, January 5, 2007
Coming off a 57-44 upset win over the fifth-ranked team in Class 6A, Blue Valley, on Wednesday and a victory over Olathe North a day earlier, Emporia High girls coach Bill Nienstedt hopes his team hasn’t gotten full on a couple victories when it squares off against Topeka West at 6 tonight in Topeka.
Two wins in this week’s Paul Terry Classic dug Emporia out of an 0-2 hole to start the season, and now EHS will have to face Topeka West, a team the Lady Spartans have handled fairly easily over the past few years.
“We were 0-2,” Nienstedt said, “and we handled adversity well. Now our new challenge will be: How do we handle success? Will be continue to be hungry?”
More than anything, the Lady Spartans (2-2, 0-1 Centennial League) received a boost of confidence with the two wins this week. They had lost their previous two games by a combined seven points, and each time it was a different problem area that plagued the Lady Spartans.
In the season opener against Shawnee Mission East, it was transition defense and late turnovers that doomed Emporia in a 36-34 heartbreaker, while a lack of rebounding and interior defense led to a 63-58 setback to Topeka High.
However, against Olathe North and Blue Valley, the Lady Spartans were decidedly better in all those areas. EHS outrebounded both its opponents by a combined 68-57, forced 45 turnovers to just 18 of its own and consistently pushed the tempo with its transition offense, which was set up by strong defensive pressure.
“We knew we could do it, but those first two games just didn’t show it,” freshman Lindy Arndt said. “Those two wins gave us a lot of confidence and showed us what we could do.”
Topeka West enters the game with a 2-3 record that includes its most recent loss — a 68-38 setback at Salina South on Dec. 21. Last season, EHS defeated the Lady Chargers, 71-50.
Nienstedt said he expects the Lady Chargers to test his squad with the type of athleticism that befits most Topeka-area schools.
“We know that Topeka West will be athletic and quick out on the perimeter. They will pressure well,” he said. “I think the biggest challenge will be that our kids know that Topeka West hasn’t been real strong in the last couple of years and that we’ve beaten them. Our kids need to make sure that they come ready to play again.”
Nichole Naab leads the EHS girls in scoring at 13.3 points per game, while Jessica Muckenthaler and Sadie Webb add 10.5 and 10.3 points per contest, respectively.
On the boys side, the Spartans simply want to play a game — any game.
The Emporia boys have been out of action since Dec. 12, and quite simply, coach Rick Bloomquists’ troops are downright sick and tired of practice.
“I know my players are ready to play a game,” Bloomquist said. “We’ve spent more time practicing during this break than we did before the season before our first game. It has been difficult to try to keep purpose and try to keep focus.
“There have been some practices that I haven’t been pleased with, and I think a lot of that is just boredom.”
While it might be hard to remember back that far, the fact remains that the Spartans (2-2) entered their nearly month-long layoff on a two-game losing streak, suffering back-to-back losses to Blue Valley West and Topeka High.
While there was plenty of technical stuff for the Spartans to work on — post defense, offensive execution, rebounding — many of the players believed that the team’s chemistry was the most crucial aspect that needed some fine-tuning during the break.
“Teamwork. We didn’t have a whole lot of chemistry going, and that’s something that I feel like over this break, we started to accumulate a lot more of,” junior guard Caydrick Bloomquist said last week. “I think that will be a big factor, because we didn’t have a lot of chemistry in the games we lost. We just looked sloppy.”
Added sophomore guard Taylor Euler: “We’ve got to get together as a team. Looking at Topeka West, they’re a good team and they have a lot of talent, but the main thing is I think we have to get together as a team and focus more on ourselves.”
While team chemistry will certainly help the Spartans, it will take more than that for Emporia to come away a winner against Topeka West (1-4) because of the inside presence of 6-foot-7 Charger center Tyler Tunnell.
Tunnell would “create problems for anybody inside,” Rick Bloomquist said, and denying him easy looks down low will be the focal point for the Spartans tonight.
“He’s a big, athletic kid. He’s not just a big lump,” Bloomquist said. “We’re going to have to have good post defense and good pressure out on the perimeter. We can’t allow their guards to do anything they want to do. If Tunnel is able to catch the ball any time he wants to catch the ball, we’ll have problems.”
Caydrick Bloomquist leads the way in scoring for the Spartans at 13.8 points per game, with Euler right behind at 13.3 points per game. Troy Pierce also is averaging double figures in scoring at 10.5 points per contest, and Kyle deBlonk has chipped in 9.8 points per game.