One of these days, the Emporia High girls basketball team is going to get to play a game in its home gym.
But not today. Actually, not for another nine days, barring any unforeseen ice/snow storms.
After Friday’s game against Junction City was postponed because of the ice storm that hit the area, the Lady Spartans have yet to play in their home gym this season, and have only played six games in total.
“We all were really looking forward to playing at home, but the weather just didn’t let us,” senior Rachael Bachman said. “It sees like it always happens on the days of our home games.”
So the Lady Spartans (3-3) will again be on the road, traveling to Leavenworth to face the Lady Pioneers in a non-Centennial League matchup at 6:30 tonight.
While the weather interrupted any sort of a routine the EHS girls had hoped to get into, coach Bill Nienstedt said the disruption was no reason to worry.
“I think it’s as big a factor you allow it to be,” Nienstedt said. “It’s just a circumstance that we’ll have to deal with. We’ll be ready to go.”
The difficulty for the Lady Spartans might be the complete change in defensive style that they will have to undergo to switch from defending Junction City to defending Leavenworth.
Junction City, with its powerful duo of sisters Dani and Alex Hoover, are more well-known for beating teams off the dribble to get easy baskets off on penetration. In Leavenworth, Emporia figures to see a smaller lineup that Nienstedt said seemed to struggle with high-pressure defense.
That means lots of on-ball pressure from the Lady Spartans.
“For Junction, we were going to have to stay back a little bit and defend off the dribble,” Bachman said, “and this team, we’re going to look to bring some pressure and see if we can get turnovers and get some easy baskets.”
That style of defense plays right into what Nienstedt and his team have focused on all year long and was best displayed in last week’s 73-32 victory over Highland Park. EHS forced 30 Lady Scot turnovers and had just 11 of its own en route to the 41-point victory.
However, Nienstedt cautioned that if his teams tried to pressure too much, it could backfire.
“When you play that way, you have to do a good job of it, because if you let people beat you off the dribble while you’re trying to pressure, then rebounding problems can develop,” he said. “It’ll be a challenge to us to pressure well enough to create turnovers, and at the same time protect the interior well enough to where we can rebound effectively.”