By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
The Southeast of Saline Lady Trojans got off to a bit of a slow start in 2020-2021, but as the young core of new players began to develop, SES took off, winning six of their last eight games, with the only two losses coming to undefeated state ranked teams.
Heading into the final month of the regular season Southeast boasts a record of 8-5.
“I think we figured out that we can play with these state-ranked teams but we still need to take things to the next level,” SES head coach Shauna Smith said. “We’ve been close in the fourth quarter a couple of times, we just need to see it through to the end.”
For the last two seasons, Karsyn Schlesener had handled a majority of the Trojan scoring load, averaging nearly 20 points per game.
That number has fallen to 14 this year, thanks to a fresh bunch of new recruits who have allowed Southeast to diversify their scoring, taking the load off of their junior guard.
“We’ve had a lot of different scorers,” Smith said. “I think we’ve had four different leading scorers sometimes even in the 20s throughout the season which has been big for us. When teams play us they can’t just key in on one person anymore.”
The aforementioned scorers include new faces like freshmen Maddie Harris and Lexi Jacobson, as well as key sophomores finding their groove like Avery Caselman and Reagan Goetz.
Add to that bunch a junior co-star in Alaina Yianakopulos and you have a young core of six players who can all score and who will all be returning next year.
The biggest question mark for the Lady Trojans heading into this season was how they would be able to overcome a major lack of size, with a lineup featuring five guards.
While there were plenty of struggles and growing pains early on, Southeast has overcome their vertical challenges with tenacious defense and great effort on the glass.
“I think we’ve started to rebound better, that was a big eyesore for us early in the year but we’ve done much better as of late,” Smith said.
The road for the Southeast will be much less bumpy than the one they got here on.
Following their rematch against Sacred Heart, Southeast’s remaining opponents have posted a combined record of just 18-37.
The level of competition however, will steeply increase when SES arrives at sub-state, but previous games against the likes of Clay Center and Sterling have prepared the Trojans for the challenge.
“We’re in a loaded sub state so we’re going to need to play our tails off,” Smith said. “In the first round there may only be two teams with losing records so we can’t rely on having just one great night, we’ll probably need two or three to make it out.”
SES will be back in action on Tuesday when they look to sweep 7-4 Sacred Heart on their home floor. The Lady Trojans defeated the Lady Knights 52-36 earlier this season.