Turnovers Cost Kit Girls In Cage Debut

Another summer spent trying to help USA Basketball win a gold medal gave Evanston girls basketball coach Brittanny Johnson plenty of opportunities to learn more about the game.

Johnson picked the brains of college coaches, AAU coaches, college players --- anyone she thought could provide some valuable advice.

Johnson’s takeaway was to upgrade the ETHS star-driven offense into a more equal opportunity attack that featured more ball screens, more passing, more movement and less 1-on-1 play.

But the Wildkits reverted back to past form in Wednesday’s season opener, committing 27 turnovers and losing 52-39 at Trinity.

Equal opportunity to commit turnovers wasn’t exactly what the veteran coach had in mind. But every time the visitors seemed poised to change the momentum in an otherwise ragged game, the Kits turned the ball over.

And the fact that sophomore Charity Bryant scored half of her team’s points (19) by taking half of her team’s shots (22) didn’t reflect a new share-the-ball philosophy.

“We didn’t trust what we’ve been doing the past two weeks in practice. We didn’t play connected,” Johnson said. “1-on-1 basketball isn’t going to make us successful, and we turned the ball over way too much because we played like that.

“On offense, what we want to do is give them the freedom to play off of each other, to spread the ball around and move it more. But when it doesn’t work? That’s what it looked like tonight. And for some reason we felt a little nervous and a little rushed out there, even though we have a lot of girls who played (varsity) last year. We’re a pretty experienced team, so I thought it was a little surprising. I guess it was first game jitters.”

Evanston connected on just 31 percent (14-of-44) of its field goal attempts and the host Blazers also dominated the rebounding statistics. Trinity, however, turned the ball 23 times and that kept the winners from breaking the game open until the fourth quarter.

Trinity never trailed and built a 25-17 lead by halftime. Neither team scored until the 4:35 mark of the third quarter when Evanston’s Havana Van Wyk (7 points) scored in the lane, and the two teams traded buckets for the rest of the period which ended with the Blazers 38-26.

Trinity post player Chloe Santos, a burly 5-foot-10 senior, scored 7 of her team-high 19 points in the fourth quarter to keep the Kits at bay. Evanston did close to within 45-37 on a free throw by Bryant with 3:25 left in the game, but the sophomore missed a 3-point attempt on the next possession and then misfired from the lane on the subsequent possession before Trinity pulled away again.

Payton King added 7 points for Evanston. The Wildkits will seek their first victory again on Saturday at Bolingbrook.