Breaking Pressure The Key For Scottie Girls

It’s all about handling pressure for the Scottie girls’ basketball team.

The Scottie girls dropped two games over the weekend, one to Class C Saco/Whitewater, 55-51, and another to Class A Sidney, 43-23. The two losses dropped the Scottie girls to 1-5 on the season, creating a bit of pressure heading into the second part of their schedule in 2013.

They’ve also been facing pressure on the court as teams have tested their ability to break a full-court press. So far, they have been inconsistent.

That was nowhere more evident than on Thursday, Dec. 20, at Saco/Whitewater, as the Lady Panthers harassed the Scottie ball-handlers all game.

“We struggled a little bit with their full-court pressure,” said Head Coach Chuck Barstad. “If we threw our passes, we were breaking the pressure without much problem, but if we put the ball on the floor, we would run into issues.”

The Scottie girls knew that would be a problem early in the season with very little experience at the guard position.

They were hoping to get through those early struggles with stout defense – and for the most part, they’ve been fairly strong on that end of the floor, allowing only 42.75 points per game coming into the weekend. But inconsistency has been a problem there, too.

In the Saco/Whitewater game, the problem was trying to close out on spot-up shooters. Saco/Whitewater’s Tatum Moore, a freshman, hit for 19 points on mostly jump shots. Her shooting was the difference in the game.

Some of the same problems arose in Sidney the next day, except Sidney is bigger, stronger and deeper than the Lady Panthers.

“Sidney is probably the best team we’ve seen all year,” said Barstad.

Sidney applied intense pressure all game and the Scottie girls were unable to break through. The Scottie girls were held to a season-low 23 points. Their previous season low was 33 points in the season opener against Glendive.

“We can see what we need to work on. We should be able to get that ironed out without too much problem,” said Barstad.

Glasgow has about two weeks off before they jump back into the meat of their schedule. They’ll have to address some of those concerns during that time as they open 2013 with four straight conference games, three of which will be on the road.

They begin with only their second home game of the season in a contest against Harlem (0-5, 0-1), then travel to Plentywood (3-1,0-1) on Jan. 5, Malta (6-0, 3-0) on Jan. 10, and finally Poplar (1-4, 0-2) on Jan. 11.