Fielding a young squad this season, Windham Bombers girls’ basketball Coach J.J. Collins said he knew it would be a bumpy road ahead. Windham’s offensive struggles continued as its losing streak reached three games in a 37-22 loss against St. Thomas Aquinas last Saturday afternoon in Louisville.
“They got off to a quick start and knocked down a couple of quick 3-pointers,” said the eight-year coach. “Their lead was 15 in the first quarter and when the game finished, we lost by 15, so the flip side of that is for three quarters we played pretty solid but we just have to figure out how to convert.”
After a promising start to the season with a 23-19 victory against Campbell Memorial on Nov. 22, the Bombers (1-3, 0-0) have suffered from a lack of offense, losing their last three games each by double-digits and have been outscored by a 140-68 margin. He acknowledged that the lack of offensive output was an issue, but it is also not something that he did not anticipate before the start of the season.
“We are exploring different options to get the ball into the bucket but again if you are averaging 43 shots a game, that does not seem like a lot, but when you have a freshman point guard and a freshman shooting guard and they do the bulk of the ball-handling, it is part of the growing pains that we are going through,” he noted.
On Saturday, another poor first quarter was all it took to derail Windham’s efforts as the Bombers were outscored by a 16-5 margin. Collins said that the Bombers were attempting to utilize a zone defense against St. Thomas Aquinas but the Knights had good ball movement and converted three 3-point shots to take an early lead. Freshman guard Sophia Ward was also aggressive in the paint, earning four free throws and buried them all to push the lead to double digits at the end of the first quarter.
According to Collins, it has been the same issues on offense that have compounded Windham’s troubles, which has been taking too much time to see the right pass or play develop.
“We try to make too many complicated passes and the best way to describe is that they see it and then they react to it rather than see and react, they see it and then they want to react to it,” he said.
The Bombers’ offensive woes continued plaguing them in the second quarter, scoring only two points but their defense kept them in striking distance as they were only outscored 5-2.
As tough as it has been to get things going offensively, Collins said that Windham’s athleticism has translated to some stout defense. It showed on Saturday, as after allowing 16 points in the first period, the Bombers only gave up 21 points over the final three periods.
“Defensively, I think we are probably as good as we could be,” he added. “Maybe there is a little more room for improvement; we allow a few too many second-chance opportunities, but that goes back to what I was saying, you have to understand basketball to understand leverage and how to score and I think that is the toughest hurdle that we were going to have coming in.”
As Ward became more aggressive in the third quarter, earning seven trips to the line and extending the Knights lead to 33-14, Collins said that St. Thomas Aquinas extended several possessions by being active on the offensive glass.
Collins acknowledged that it was not until the fourth period when Windham’s offense showed some life as the Bombers became much more aggressive trying to disrupt the passing lanes on defense and that mindset carried over onto the offensive end, winning the final period 9-4.
Although Windham experienced its best offensive quarter of the game, the Bombers left points at the free throw line. Windham only made five free throws out of 18 attempts in the game.
“That is very discouraging because we spend the first 15 minutes of practice working on foul shooting,” Collins said. “We are young but some of it is just the unwillingness to figure it out and I have to do a better job of it on my end to make sure we are taking that 15 minutes of foul shooting and we are figuring it out.”
Following a road game against Badger on Wednesday morning, the Bomber girls will return home and host Chalker at Marty Hill Court on Friday afternoon beginning at 4:30 p.m.
