While they are celebrating their most impressive victory of the season for a few days, the Owensboro girls’ basketball team is hoping it’s only the beginning of a strong finish to the year.
Expectations were somewhat tempered heading into the season for an overall young and inexperienced Lady Devils’ roster, but head coach Jansen Locher also knew that there was potential to compete with just about any team in the area.
“We knew coming in this year the region was going to be wide open,” he said. “Catholic has dominated for quite some time and they’re still top dog until somebody knocks them off, but we just beat Apollo by the same amount Catholic beat them by. That’s not to say we’re as good as Catholic or anything like that, but it goes to show on any given night anybody can win.”
OHS executed their game plan to near perfection in upsetting Apollo, grinding out a 37-35 come-from-behind victory on Friday.
“Our girls finally understand that we’re not going to score 60 or 70 points a night,” Locher said. “We know that we’re going to win on defensive rebounding. We know that if we have the ball, the other team can’t score. We’ve learned to be patient with the ball.”
Locher said they will soon get back to work preparing for a tough upcoming schedule, but he wanted to let his team enjoy their accomplishment.
“We’re going to celebrate and then get back and get ready for the next one,” he said. “This is a confidence booster. Apollo is a good team, they’ve competed with some good teams, and they’ve beaten some good teams.”
Locher said his team has slowly been coming together, and a turning point came during a late December tournament in Murray — even though the Lady Devils lost a pair of lopsided contests.
“It’s taken us a while, but I feel like we came together at the tournament in Murray,” he said. “We spent some time together. We saw how some top teams in the state play. We let our girls know that can be us if we learn to do some simple things.”
It was especially beneficial for this year’s team, Locher said, because they lost four key players from last season for various reasons.
“We had some girls that were thrown into the fire this year,” Locher said. “We knew they could play and they have talent, but they had to understand the speed of the game, the fundamentals, the movements, the spacing and things like that.”
Locher said seniors Nia Gonzo and Tamia Chambers have been vital in helping everyone on the roster learn how to play together at the varsity level.
“They’ve helped everybody understand that it’s not about what grade you’re in, it’s what you can do on the court and everybody taking advantage of their minutes,” Locher said. “As seniors they’re not getting a ton of minutes, but they’re making them count. They’re doing what’s best for the team to win, not what’s best for them.”
The Lady Devils will now begin preparations for the most daunting stretch on the schedule, starting with a game at Grayson County on Monday and a district matchup at Owensboro Catholic on Friday.
Locher is hoping to ride the momentum of their latest win while also continuing to focus on improving each day.
“We’re going to try to build off of it,” he said. “But I also have to let these girls know that we can’t get too high off this win because we have a really tough schedule ahead of us.”
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