Derby girls land marquee win by beating Carroll
In what has been an up-and-down season for the Derby girls basketball team, coach Jodie Karsak believed her team’s lack of an identity was to blame for the inconsistency.
On Saturday afternoon at Koch Arena, Derby may have found the identity it was looking for in a 56-36 victory over Bishop Carroll, a team that entered 7-1 and ranked fifth in Class 5A by the coaches association.
“I really liked our defense today,” Karsak said. “We were getting after it with the ball pressure and they had a hard time scoring for most of the game.”
Carroll scored five points under its previous season-low output on offense and even that was misleading on how just how much of a struggle it had scoring on Saturday.
Through three quarters Carroll had mustered just 14 points. Its two leading scorers, Brynn Maul and Ashley Carrillo, who average a combined 25 points, were held to three by Derby.
“I feel like our problem today was we settled for threes and we settled for outside shots,” Carroll coach Taylor Dugan said. “We’re running an offense where we’re supposed to penetrate and we’re supposed to be attacking the rim and instead we were settling. When we’re not hitting, we let it dictate our entire game.”
Derby’s on-ball pressure was certainly a factor, but also discouraging Carroll from driving was the presence of 6-foot-6 sophomore Kennedy Brown patrolling the paint for the Panthers.
After jumping out to a 7-2 start, Derby never once faced a rally from Carroll. The Panthers led 20-9 at halftime and its double-digit advantage never vanished in the second half.
“Another big thing for us today that I didn’t feel like we had coming in was we had other players step up and score,” Karsak said. “That’s what we’ve been missing.”
Outside of its main creators, Brown (11 points) and Tor’e Alford (6), Derby had important offensive contributions from freshman Sydney Nilles, who scored 14 points, as well as Madi Young (eight), Aliyah Meyers (five), and Jade Winter (five).
“I’m feel like I’m more confident to go in and shoot now,” Nilles said. “I used to be really nervous and I didn’t want the ball, but now I feel awesome.”
Derby | 11 | 9 | 13 | 23 | — | 56 |
Carroll | 4 | 5 | 5 | 22 | — | 36 |
DERBY: S. Nilles 14, K. Brown 11, M. Young 8, T. Alford 6, Al. Myers 5, J. Winter 5, J. Johnson 3, H. Mills 2, K. Henson 2.
CARROLL: H. Landwehr 14, J. Allen 6, A. McCorry 6, A. McFarren 3, A. Carrillo 2, K. Schuckman 2, B. Maul 1.
This story was originally published January 14, 2017 at 5:57 PM with the headline "Derby girls land marquee win by beating Carroll."