By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
With just one non-league game remaining on their schedule, the Southeast of Saline girl’s basketball team will return to the Purple Palace, looking to defend their home floor from Ellinwood in a rare Monday night matchup.
The Lady Trojans come into this contest riding a seven-game winning streak at 15-2 while the Lady Eagles enter at 9-8 looking to keep their heads above .500.
Southeast is also fresh off a wild 55-49 win over rival Minneapolis that saw a new career-high for Reagan Goetz, reinvigorating the Lady Trojan offense.
“I thought that was the first solid, all-around game we had played since Christmas,” SES head coach Shauna Smith said. “The scoring wasn’t as spread out but things were just coming easy for Reagan. We were better offensively as a whole and we did a good job of slowing things down.”
With the offense starting to click, Southeast becomes even more dangerous down the stretch, adding that to a defense that has held their opponents under 38 points on average.
“We’ve done a much better job since changing some things defensively and that showed the other night,” Smith said.
Now, the Lady Trojans turn their attention to an Ellinwood team that features one of the more prolific scorers that SES has seen this year in Brittany Simpson, who averages 21 points on any given night.
“She gets out and pushes the ball up the floor well,” she said. “Any time she can she’s going to drive on you and she finishes strong so we have to keep her in front of us and make sure we’re not fouling her. We can’t give her easy looks but we also can’t bail her out.”
If they can slow Simpson down, Southeast will still need to crack the code of a stout Eagle defense that has given them trouble in the past.
“Last year we struggled with their zone so we have to hit a few shots from the outside to get ourselves going there,” Smith said. “We also need to work on not taking the first open shot we see so we can get some looks inside.”
Tip-off between the Lady Trojans and Eagles is set for 6:00 at Southeast of Saline High School, with the boys’ game to follow at 7:30.
Both games can be heard on KINA (910 AM or 107.5 FM) courtesy of Eagle Radio, and both can also be streamed with live audio and video on the Salina Post.