Top-seeded Lady Eagles have State championship in their sights
By Michael Ashford
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
There’s nothing quite like a shot at a State championship to get a team to play a little harder, to go a little longer in practice, to want it a little more.
For the Olpe girls basketball team, the fact that they have a legitimate chance at a title might be the driving force behind the Lady Eagles’ recent stretch of games in Regional and Sub-State play.
At least that’s how coach Jesse Nelson sees it.
“You’re not going to play teams that come in and don’t want to play hard late in the season in Sub-State and games like that,” Nelson said. “I think we played at Sub-State with about as much intensity and desire as what we’ve shown at any time during the season.”
So far this season, even when Olpe wasn’t playing at its best, it didn’t matter who lined up opposite the Lady Eagles. Olpe is 25-0 heading into this week’s Class 1A State Tournament at Gross Coliseum in Hays — having turned back every advance that opposing teams could throw its way — and is the tournament’s No. 1 seed.
But at times earlier this year, Nelson believed his team coasted through games, particularly the ones where the score was out of hand midway through the second quarter — and there were a lot of those games this season for the Lady Eagles.
However that was not the case this past weekend at White Auditorium, where Olpe won its two Sub-State games by an average of 28 points and played with the kind of fire and effort Nelson has expected all along.
“I really challenged that idea of playing with more intensity,” Nelson said. “I thought that they really met that challenge. They played up-tempo and stronger during those games.”
So now comes State. This year marks the third straight tournament appearance for the Lady Eagles.
Olpe, thanks to its top seed, will play eighth-seeded Wheatland-Grinnell (18-7) at 3 p.m. Thursday in the first round.
But don’t be fooled by Wheatland-Grinnell’s seemingly pedestrian record. The Lady Thunderhawks struggled at the beginning of the season when they played without the services of three players because of volleyball injuries, starting the year 0-3. But once those players returned, Wheatland-Grinnell turned things around, closing out the year 18-4.
Nelson said the Lady Thunderhawks would present a difficult first-round matchup for his team, adding that 5-foot-11 Wheatland-Grinnell senior Megan Weaver would be one of the best players the Lady Eagles have seen all season.
“Everybody I’ve talked to says that they’re a very, very athletic group ... and they match us in size,” he said. “The big girl (Weaver) is perhaps as athletic as any post player in 1A. She’s been described as the best post player in that area.”
But provided the seeds hold, Olpe could find itself vying for the school’s first State title since 1981.
The fact that it has been so long since the Lady Eagles last won a championship despite being a perennial powerhouse doesn’t weigh on Nelson’s mind, though.
Instead, he just wants his players to keep playing quality basketball.
“Honestly, whether it’s right or wrong, I don’t put a ton of emphasis on that (a State title),” he said. “I’ve always said that we want to go out there and play three games, and we want to play three good games. If you get to do that, then you have to accept whatever happens to you.”