The 19-5 girls basketball team is currently placed third in the conference behind Niles West and Maine South.
The team started their conference season with a convincing 15-point victory over Waukegan, followed by a 5-point victory over New Trier. According to senior co-captain Colleen McDonagh, the majority of the team’s success can be attributed to their wide range of talent.
“Each night there is a different high scorer,” McDonagh said. “So I think that teams can’t really focus on one player and try to shut them down because then someone else will step up.”
Though the lady Titans are fierce on the offensive side of the court, head coach Steven Weissenstein, who is now in his 23rd year as a head basketball coach at South, says the team’s best weapon is their defense.
“It’s nice to know that going into any game you’re going to play good defense, and because you play good defense you’re going to have a chance to win the game,” Weissenstein said.
In fact, the team’s defensive strengths have held their opponents to an average of 29.8 percent shooting from the field, while they themselves are shooting over 40 percent.
The team has also excelled in tournament play. They took second place in both the Schaumburg Thanksgiving classic and the Wheaton North Falcon Classic, amassing a 7-2 tournament record.
Despite the early season conference wins and deep tournament runs, the team continued their conference season with losses to Niles West and Maine South. According to McDonagh, both were close games heading into the fourth quarter. Weissenstein says that the elimination of mental mistakes could have helped in reversing the outcome.
“If you make just one or two mental errors, that can be the difference in the game,” Weissenstein said. “When you play a really good team, you’ve got to be pretty close to perfect.”
In McDonagh’s mind, the formula to win is to come out of the gate strong and make sure that the opponent is not out of reach at the half.
“Games that we do our best in are either where it is close at half, or when we’re ahead,” McDonagh said. “We always finish off a game strong.”
Both McDonagh and senior co-captain Amelia Hummel agree that in order to do this, the team has to use their speed and height to their advantage. Senior Sara Meinecke is one person that the team and Weissenstein have turned to in order to bring that “spark off the bench”.
“[Sara] completely changes the speed of the game, and is able to finish and score a lot around the basket,” Hummel said.
Hummel also noted that Molly McDonagh, sister and teammate, has “stepped up this year and became a scoring machine”.
Last Friday, the GBS team was ranked third for the regional finals that will take place on Feb 16. They will take on New Trier who is ranked fourth, and who they have beaten once and lost to once.
The regionals are still very far in the future, according to Weissenstein.
“We’ve got big things to take care of before [regionals],” Weissenstein said. “Our first order of business it to try and win conference.”
