By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
Despite facing a scare on Tuesday night, the ninth-ranked Southeast of Saline girl’s basketball team was able to persevere and advance to 2-0 with a 48-46 win over Smoky Valley.
The Lady Vikings held a two-point lead in the final minutes but Southeast tightened the clamps and rattled off a late 4-0 run to reclaim the upper hand, turning Smoky Valley over twice in the same span.
“A win like that shows how much experience we have,” SES head coach Shauna Smith said. “When we needed a big basket we got it, when we needed a big stop we got it and when we needed key rebounds we got those. It’s nice to know that our five starters have played on the varsity floor for 3-4 years now.”
Despite all their experience, the Lady Trojans are still looking to fill a leadership void left by Karsyn Schlesener, who had herself been a mainstay in the lineup for the better part of four years.
“We talked to the girls a lot about communication and we still need to find some leadership,” Smith said. “Every night on every play we need somebody we can look to and we ran some communication drills in practice this week.”
With their top-ten ranking and 2-0 record in hand, Southeast will now turn their attention to their first road trip of the year as SES kicks off the league portion of their schedule in Beloit.
To say that Southeast of Saline has dominated the North Central Activities Association over the last two years doesn’t truly do their run justice, as the Lady Trojans are a perfect 18-0 in that span to go with a pair of uncontested league titles.
While those accolades bring a level of pressure, SES remains more focused on the individual implications of this matchup.
“We look at this more as a rivalry with Beloit than just another league game,” She said. “We’re going to have a target on our backs for a while, everybody wants to beat you when you’re ranked and when we haven’t lost in the league for two years but we’re taking things game by game.”
This year’s Beloit team will enter this matchup at 1-1 with a victory over Concordia and a 50-35 loss to Clay Center already in hand.
The orange Trojans, like Southeast, bring back the nucleus of a young team from a season ago, which should make for a great matchup as Beloit looks to wrestle back control of the league.
“They have some key kids returning but they also bring in some young kids who don’t have as many varsity minutes,” Smith said. “We have to guard well, rebound at a high level and be able to attack the basket and score. We can't just rely on making threes and we have to keep them off the boards.”
Tip-off in Beloit is set for 6 pm with the boy's game to follow at 7:30, as always the game can be heard on KINA (910 AM or 107.5 FM) or streamed with live audio and video on the Salina Post.