By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
The Southeast of Saline girl’s basketball team put together the best offensive effort of their season in a 68-26 beatdown of the Chapman Lady Irish.
With this win, the Lady Trojans advance to 12-3 on the year having won six of their last seven while Chapman falls to 6-9.
“We got off to a really good start tonight,” SES head coach Shauna Smith said. “The score does shock me because I thought their size was going to hurt us tonight but we played really well on both sides for 32 minutes”
Southeast surpassed their tallies in both of their overtime games this season thanks to another incredibly even scoring spread, with four different Trojans in double digits.
Among that group were new career highs for Brielle Ptacek and Lexi Jacobson who led the way with 13 and 12 respectively.
Ptacek came out on fire in this game, knocking down each of her first five shots to give SES a 23-9 lead at the end of the first quarter.
“I have 8-9 kids that could start for us in any given game with the talent we have but it’s been awesome to have Brielle give us that instant energy and she’s guarding people well too,” Smith said.
The Trojans kept the scoring going late into the fourth quarter, but while many may have seen that as an opportunity to let off the gas, SES took it as an opportunity to continue to grow offensively.
“I wasn’t really looking at the scoreboard but we’re still working on things as the season winds down,” she said. “I want my kids to feel the confidence in their scoring and get some of our other kids involved.”
Among other things that the Lady Trojans have improved upon, being more flexible on offense has been a major key since the break.
“We’ve been talking about not being robots and not always relying on option one,” Smith said. “Our veterans have been doing a better job and that’s opened things up for us.”
SES will be back in action next week with a pair of tough league games against Beloit and Minneapolis, and a chance to lock down another league title if they can take care of business.
“It’s going to be a tough game for us and they’re going to scout us really well,” she said. “They’re young but they have some real players so we have to take care of business before we play Minneapolis on Friday.”