Last week, the Central Alberta Christian High School senior girls Knights made short work of the Parkview Adventist Academy Panthers, outscoring them 67 to 20 at Central Alberta Christian High School.
CACHS Knights Coach Travis Eggink said his team follows a “The best offense is a good defense” mentality and that strategy is what led them to victory.
“Defense leads to offense,” said Eggink. “We work hard on defense to get easier offensive opportunities.”
It was a fast game where the Knights completely dominated the court. Using speed, lots of movement and solid passing the Knights outmaneuvered and therefore outplayed the Panthers.
Capitalizing on the Panthers’ mistakes, the Knights were able to secure quite a few turnovers throughout the game to keep the ball in their hands. When the Panthers did manage to get control of the ball, the Knights’ high-pressure defense kept them from scoring.
Eggink said that, while the Knights are generally a fairly high-scoring team, baskets can be hard to come by in girls basketball. He said the Knights’ speed and ability to constantly keep moving (as well as the aforementioned strong defense) led to better scoring opportunities for them.
Right now, the Knights are in the refinement stage of skill-building. Eggink said the girls have the skill and ability to play hard, now the goal is to make sure that is how they play consistently.
PAA Panthers Coach Brent van Rensburg said it was a combination of inexperience and fatigue that lost his team the game. Van Rensburg said the girls were still recovering from a recent tournament in Washington and the Panthers’ game suffered because of it.
“They had some heavy legs,” said van Rensburg. “They weren’t playing aggressive.”
Van Rensburg added that many of his players have not played basketball before and are much less experienced than some of the CACHS players. He said that the inexperience, combined with fatigue, contributed to the large amount of turnovers the Knights were able to capitalize on.
Overall, the Panthers are in a learning season, said van Rensburg. He said the girls seem to be improving with each game (Wednesday’s game excluded) and he knows they can play better.
“It’s building and teaching them never to give up,” said van Rensburg. He added that, even in a blowout game like this one, there is always opportunity for the players to learn and improve.
“You are going to have one of those games now and again.”
Confidence and aggression are two things that the Panthers need to learn to be competitive in this league, said van Rensburg.
“The aggressiveness of this league is something that the new girls who haven’t played before need to learn.”
Eggink said that his team has had a very strong season. He added that as he has been working with a lot of the same players on the team for a number of years now and has been able to advance their skills.
That kind of experience certainly shows on the court and Eggink agreed that PAA’s lack of experience made a big difference in this game.