Senior hoopsters tops in NorWOSSA

Mike Busch hunched over, unwound his basketball briefcase, took out the team’s scorekeeping book, and flipped to the page that unveiled—all at once—the team’s strengths and flaws.
Busch, head coach of the Muskie senior girls’ basketball team, pointed to the attempts made by the Dryden Eagles here last Thursday (not so many), then pointed to the number of attempts made by his squad (quite a few).
Then he pointed to where those shots were coming from—in close.
Yet what you saw in Busch’s playbook was not reflected in the final score. The Muskies won, yes, but only by a 26-22 margin.
“If you look at where we shoot from, we have twice the opportunities than the other team have in attempts,” noted Busch as he pointed to the game’s shot attempts and shots made diagram.
“We have to start putting them in,” he stressed. “But we’re taking shots from good areas. We’re in that 12-foot range, that’s where we want to be, but they have to drop.
“When you keep shooting that many shots from that close, you’re going to start making baskets,” Busch added. “We are getting the shots that we want. We are getting good looks at the basket.”
Despite the score, a win is a win and the Muskies—sitting atop the league standings with a 3-1 record (their second game of the season against Kenora was postponed due to a scheduling mix-up)—are now riding a three-game NorWOSSA streak after a shocking loss in their season-opener.
“This is where we want to be,” said Carley McCormick, who netted 11 points in the win against Dryden last Thursday. “The first game was kind of a blooper. We all thought that we were going to do so well and then that happened.
“And then we knew that coach would be harder on us in practice, so we tried harder at practice so that we wouldn’t have to run so much,” she added.
Muskie guard Rebecca Cornell added seven points versus the Eagles and, combined with McCormick, the pair accounted for close to 70 percent of the team’s scoring.
“Carley and Rebecca play so well together. They’re a good tandem and they’re hard to stop when they get going,” said Busch. “When one isn’t scoring, the other one seems to be.
“And it’s not all about scoring, it’s the play-making and the defence,” he added.
Before the game, McCormick was feeling good about her play coming off a 14-point performance against the Kenora Broncos up there two days earlier and knew that she wanted to contribute as a scorer again against Dryden.
“I knew before the game that I wanted to score,” she said. “I got 14 in Kenora so I wanted to do well at home, also.
“But we need to take more time on offence. We need to follow through better and get those ones under the basket,” she admitted. “Defence looks great. Defense is awesome.”
The senior girls’ will resume NorWOSSA play tomorrow (Oct. 21) at 3:30 p.m. when Kenora comes to town. And the team won’t be taking the Broncos or the Eagles lightly anymore in a league they thought would be of no real challenge.
“It was good that we lost that first game,” said Busch, whose team goals included going undefeated in NorWOSSA play.
“We actually thought we would walk through the league fairly uncontested by Kenora and Dryden, and we’re happy to see that that isn’t the case,” he added.