By TYLER HENRY
Salina Post contributor
After falling to Hesston 63-41 in their season opener, the Southeast of Saline Lady Trojans have an excellent chance to get back on track tonight against the 1-0 Smoky Valley Vikings.
Smoky Valley defeated the Abilene Cowgirls 45-31 in their first game of the year on Friday.
The Vikings will likely start three seniors in Ellie Brumbaugh, Kerington Haxton and McKinley Johnson, a junior in Breanna Priddy and a freshman in Adrian Hazelwood.
Some of Smoky Valley’s key players are coming off of quarantine this week, so it remains to be seen how many minutes they will get or even what the quality of those minutes might be.
For SES, this is an excellent opportunity to continue pushing through early season growing pains.
“After watching some film I don’t think the girls were as prepared as we thought,” SES head coach Shauna Smith said. “We need more leadership on the court especially since we have some young kids out there. We only had three girls with a lot of varsity experience and I think the lack of experience really showed.”
This will also be a great opportunity to get Karsyn Schlesener, who averaged just under 19 points per game a season ago but was held to just seven last week, going in a big way.
Coach Smith laid out the biggest keys to success for SES this week.
“We talked about being more disciplined on defense,” she said. “We need to attack better and not give up so many easy buckets. We have to make them earn their points but we also need to foul less.”
The Lady Trojans will be at home once more tonight for another 6pm tip. As always Eagle Radio is the home for SES Trojan and Lady Trojan basketball and games can be heard live on KINA (910 AM and 107.5 FM).