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Lady Jacks searching for consistency
Last weekend, the Quincy High School girls basketball team lost two games by a combined 63 points.
Despite that, Quincy head coach Cully Donovan is convinced that his squad is slowly making improvements, gaining experience and could be a threat in the second half of the season.
After losing to two top Central Washington Athletic Conference programs — East Valley (52-19 on Friday) and Othello (58-28 on Saturday) — the Lady Jacks sit at 2-4, seventh place in the competitive CWAC.
"I think we're capable of beating anyone in our league if we can put together four quarters of good basketball," Donovan said. "If we can hit our open shots and get rebounds when we should and keep the turnovers down, I think we can be competitive with anyone."
Entering the season, Donovan knew that his team would be without its top scorer from the past four years, 1,000-point scorer Tashia Zamarron; feature just one senior, post Colleen Knodell; and lack an experienced point guard.
However, Donovan has been able to mold the Lady Jacks, who feature a core of junior players who gained extensive varsity experience last season as sophomores, into a team that, last weekend non-withstanding, has been competitive.
"The big thing is consistency," Donovan said. "It's been a little up-and-down. (We) have a lot of room for improvement. On the court, when we make good decisions, we do a pretty good job of scoring in transition. Team chemistry is really good. The girls all get along well and share the ball well. We have a lot of assists so far."
At times this season, the Lady Jacks haven't shot the ball well — they made just four shots against the Red Devils and shot 24 percent against the Huskies.
They've also had their share of rebounding trouble at times, partly because they don't have a lot of height, and most of the teams they've run up against feature a post player 6-foot or taller, such as all-state performer Tamara Jones of Prosser, Kinzi Poteet of Grandview and Cashmere's Rachel Lippert and Emily Abbott.
But Donovan was quick to point out that rebounding is not entirely about height, as junior post/wing Dayanna Lopez has proven — before last weekend's games, Lopez was averaging a team-high 11 boards per game.
"We can get better at defensive rebounding; offensive (rebounding) also," Donovan said. "We're pretty undersized a lot of times. We have one 5-foot-10 girl (Knodell), and a lot of times we play teams that have several (girls who are) 6-foot or better. We're undersized, but if we can figure (the rebounding) out, we'll be better.
"Just working on it in practice, working on being at the right spot, finding bodies every time (will helps us become better rebounders). A lot of rebounding is attitude. Once they get that attitude and think 'rebound' every time, it will happen a lot more."
But the one thing that's probably held the Lady Jacks back more than anything so far this season has been turnovers. They've particularly struggled against teams that like to employ a lot of defensive pressure and full-court traps — a team like East Valley, for instance. The Lady Jacks had 30 turnovers against East Valley, and posted "close to 20," giveaways, according to Donovan, the next night against Othello. Against Cascade on Dec. 11, a 45-33 loss, they had 33 turnovers.
"Way too many," Donovan said. "It just depends on the decision making. We have two girls who we're trying to work in as point guards who don't have a lot of experience at the varsity level doing that — Taylor Kunkel, who ran a lot of wing last year, and Kayla Horning, who ran some point guard on the JV team last year. But varsity is a whole new game for her. That's part of it. The other part is the girls are trying to force the ball too much. We're making poor decisions in transition and on the fast break.
"Early, I expected (turnovers) because we didn't have a point guard with experience. But I think it will get better."
Kunkel, a 5-8 junior, has improved her point guard skills — "She's gotten a lot more confident doing it," Donovan said — but it's been tempting for Donovan to move her to the wing at times this season to take advantage of her other strengths.
After averaging 5.8 and 4.3 rebounds points per game last season, Kunkel has seen her game blossom this season, and she's now one of the team's better all-around players — she's averaging a team-high 9 points per game so far, with a season high of 18 against Grandview.
"She's a good scorer," Donovan said. "Whenever Kayla's in the game, I let her (run the point) to let Taylor run up the wing to try to get more scoring out of her."
Donovan and the Lady Jacks can look back to their game against Toppenish on Dec. 20 for an example of what their potential can be. In that game, they wiped out an eight-point halftime deficit by outscoring the Wildcats 28-13 in the second half thanks to aggressive defense and rebounding.
The Lady Jacks' ability to break pressure defenses will be once again tested this weekend; they host Wapato (3-3) tonight and Ephrata (3-3) on Saturday.
The Wolves feature returning first-team all-league post A.J. Yarlott, who transferred to Wapato this year from Toppenish.
"Wapato's a good team," Donovan said. "They're always a quick, scrappy, in-your-face, pressing type of team. That's going to give us a test on our press-breaking skills and composure, because they play physical. That will be a good test for us. But I think it's a team we can beat if we take care of the basketball and do those things."
Another good thing for the Lady Jacks is that they just completed a brutal stretch in their schedule. In the past two weeks, they've played three strong state contenders in the CWAC — league-leading Prosser (6-0), East Valley (6-1) and Othello (4-2).
So despite last weekend's results, the outlook is bright for Quincy, which is certainly capable of climbing up the CWAC to gain a coveted top-four position at the end of the season if it can continue to mature and cut down on mistakes.
"We just told them to stay positive," Donovan said of the speech he made to his team after last weekend's contests. "The season's young. There's a lot of room to get better. I try to point out the positives (areas) where we did do well. At times we played good defense and at times we made good decisions. I think they understand that the potential is there if we can just be consistent."
Contact Doug Flanagan at reporter@qvpr.com or through Facebook:
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