By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
The Southeast of Saline girls basketball team will enter the holiday break on a four-game win streak following a 51-33 victory over the Sacred Heart Knights.
SES advances to 5-1 on the season, while Sacred Heart will enter the new year at 2-4.
Southeast was led in scoring once again by Karsyn Schlesener, who dropped 16 points in the wire-to-wire win.
Schlesener was joined in double figures by Maddie Harris, who added twelve more including a pair of threes in the third quarter.
“We talked about being a little more fluid with our offense,” SES head coach Shauna Smith said. “We’re going to continue working on some more detailed things with that.”
With a late lead, the Trojans were also able to get some of their younger players onto the floor to experience good varsity minutes.
“It’s always good to be able to get some of your younger kids out there,” Smith said. “They were able to get that feeling of what it’s like to be on the varsity court and to see how fast the pace of the game is.”
For their part, the Southeast defense allowed just one Knight, Katie Weiss, to score double digits. SES has not allowed more than one double-digit scorer in any of their five wins so far.
“Defensively I thought we did a great job of limiting their post players,” Smith said. “We knew we couldn’t take away absolutely everything and we needed to score some more buckets in the second half.”
The Lady Trojans also forced 22 turnovers while coughing up the ball just seven times and dominating on the glass.
Those turnovers and boards led to plenty of good looks in transition, allowing Southeast to go on several big runs.
“We need to be getting transition points every single night,” she said. “I thought we did a good job of getting out and pushing them back so they couldn’t grab offensive boards comfortably.”
SES will be back in action on January 7th for a league matchup in Minneapolis while Sacred Heart resumes on the 11th hosting Republic County.
For more on both teams in 2022 stay tuned to the Salina Post.