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Turnovers bring an abrupt end to season
Glenbrook South's Katie Dwyer goes for a loose ball against Resurrection during the Class 4A Glenbrook North Regional final in Northbrook, Friday, February 15, 2013 I David Banks~for Sun-Times Media
Updated: March 22, 2013 10:23AM
NORTHBROOK — The Glenbrook South girls basketball team’s main weakness was its ball-handling.
“They’re not ball handlers, and that’s the one thing that has been our Achilles heel this year has been turnovers,” Glenbrook South coach Steve Weissenstein said. “When we’re able to not turn it over, we’re pretty much unbeatable, but when we turn it over a lot, teams come up and bite us in the butt, which is what happened tonight.”
Indeed, on a painful Friday night for the Titans, their propensity for turnovers led to a season-ending 52-46 loss to Resurrection in the Class 4A Glenbrook North regional final.
“We scouted them. I know they scouted us,” Resurrection coach Keith Miniscalco said. “We saw that their ballhandling (was) a little suspect. We went after that. We exploited their weakness.”
With a starting lineup composed entirely of 6-footers, Glenbrook South can be tough to stop once it gets into its half-court offense, a fact both Weissenstein and Miniscalco were aware of.
“We knew we couldn’t get into a half-court set with these guys,” Miniscalco said. “Molly McDonagh is too strong of a player in the post as you guys well saw. She bodies up, she mans up well and she goes up strong. We had to make adjustments for that and that was our pressure and our speed.”
In the first half, Miniscalco opted not to pressure Glenbrook South, going with his usual triangle defense.
“I was even kind of surprised early that they didn’t pressure us more,” Weissenstein said.
In the second half, however, Miniscalco switched to a half-court trap and a full-court press to unravel the Titans’ offense. Just as Miniscalco predicted, McDonagh could not be stopped inside, leading all scorers with 22 points, but Resurrection collected enough turnovers to win the game. During a pivotal stretch in the fourth quarter, the Bandits turned a 40-40 tie into a five-point lead by forcing three straight Titans turnovers.
An injury to Titans senior point guard Lindsey Oldshue didn’t help matters.
“I think we just kind of lost it,” McDonagh said. “We really had our momentum going. When Lindsey got hurt, that really kind of slowed us down with the ballhandling. They were really able to pressure us. We didn’t pass fake very well.”
Though Oldshue was on the court during Resurrection’s decisive run, she wasn’t the same after rolling her ankle early in the fourth quarter.
“A little hobbled towards the end,” Oldshue said. “Someone kind of stepped from the inside. I’ve had ankle problems forever. I just kind of had a couple cracks that just freaked me out a little bit. Coming back, I had tightened everything up, and it was just still really sore.”
With 1:31 remaining, the Titans were still within three points, but breakdowns on both ends of the court allowed the Bandits to build on their lead.
“In the last minute, we lost our composure a little bit,” Oldshue said. “The passes and the cuts that we were making just weren’t what we should have done.”
“(They) weren’t crisp,” McDonagh added. “We beat ourselves.”
Together, a rolled ankle and an Achilles heel doomed the Titans.
