The girls basketball team (3-0) heads to Greenwood Community High School Thursday afternoon, looking to defend the Johnson County title. They play Indian Creek High School (2-1) tonight at 7:30 p.m.
The Trojans are heading into this game as the favorite. With no losses in this season, they have the better record. If they succeed in tonight’s game they have a chance to play Franklin Community High School (0-4) on Saturday.
“As far as we know Indian Creek, they have a lot of guards, and they don’t have a lot of post power, so Emerson is really going to be the key on Thursday,” junior Gracyn Gilliard said. “I do know Franklin, they lost a lot of people last year, so they will be kind of underdeveloped this year. But that’s no excuse. They are still going to be a tough competitor.”
The team is led in steals by Gilliard, who averages 3.7 steals per game, followed by Hannah Gin (1.7 spg) and Mackenzie Pierce (1.3 spg). The Trojans will need to get a strong defensive start against their opponents in order to get ahead of them and win.
“We watched a lot of film over them,” Gin said. “We will probably intensify our toughness. Our plan is to stay strong with our lockdown defense. Get the job done on the defensive end and then focus on our offensive part and scoring.”
The Trojans have made some changes on the team due to losing a few teammates that were a crucial part of the group that graduated.
“I think we’ve gotten really good at playing together,” Gin said. “There has been a really big change coming off of not playing with each other for a long time. We have just been adapting to each other. Everyone has learned their roles.”
Indian Creek is led in scoring, rebounding, steals and blocks by Alexa Sichting, who averages 15.3 points per game, pulls down 12.3 boards a game, gets 3 steals per game and 2.7 blocks per game. She will be a problem that the Trojans will need to watch out for.
Although the Trojans have won a lot of games including County Championships, winning this tournament would still mean a lot to them.
“Winning this game would mean a lot to our team,” Gilliard said. “It would be a really big step in our game. It would help set up the season for sure. There has been a lot of pressure recently leading up to this because Center Grove has won County for who knows how long. It’s not every day you get a chance to win a championship.”
