The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Host Caprock Saturday, January 18 at 1 p.m.
By Than Acuff
Despite the massive break from workouts and games, Crested Butte Titans girls’ basketball coach Anna Bressnick was pleasantly surprised with what she saw in their first week of practices after the holiday hiatus.
“I knew we were going to be a little rusty on Monday but on Tuesday when everyone was back, we hit the ground running,” says Bressnick. “We worked a lot on offense and we had really good workouts all week.”
As a result, the team was feeling pretty good going into their game against the Buena Vista Demons on Friday, January 10. Furthermore, game film showed a Demon team that relied on zone defense, so the Titans prepared accordingly. Unfortunately, that’s not what they found when they took the court.
“They were super aggressive, full court press, man defense,” says Bressnick. “If we went to the bathroom, they went with us.”
That was a bit of a shock for the Titans but rather than crumble under the initial impact of the Demon’s play, the Titans handled it rather well.
“We did have to adjust on the fly, but these girls can adjust, they’re a resilient group,” says Bressnick. “It’s nothing we hadn’t seen before. Teams like to pressure the Titans.”
Both Molly Miller and Calla Fenlon saw success breaking the Demon’s press and while the game could have easily gotten out of hand early, the Titans battled and stayed in touch with Buena Vista to finish the first quarter down just five points.
“We handled the press very well, but we couldn’t quite get into an offensive flow,” says Bressnick.
Crested Butte did manage to generate points off broken plays and transitions, but Buena Vista continued to keep the heat on and that eventually wore the Titans down. The Demons slowly built on their lead during the second quarter and while they doubled their lead, the game was still not out of hand.
“I felt we were still very much in it,” says Bressnick.Though she is quick to admit a coaching error in the waning moments of the first half. Thinking Fenlon only had two fouls on her, Bressnick kept her in the game to continue help breaking the press. Unfortunately, Fenlon had three fouls and she picked up her fourth foul just before halftime.
“That one is on me,” says Bressnick. “Calla was getting around their press in the first half, but we had to make some adjustments heading into the second half and we had some fatigue and just kind of fell apart.”
Buena Vista continued to build on their advantage taking a 34-16 lead into the fourth quarter and continued to push the pace as they closed out the game with a 44-24 win. Miller finished the game with 19 points, seven rebounds and five steals.
“We started to play hero ball and weren’t working together,” says Bressnick. “If we clean up the turnovers, we stay in that game.”
Bressnick was happy with other aspects though as she had been impressing on her team to look to the basket and look to run the offense in the face of pressure.
“We’re looking to drive, that looked a lot better,” says Bressnick. “And we were smart with where we were going with the ball on offense. We knew where we wanted to go, getting the right look.”
Moving forward, Bressnick hopes to get more players involved in the scoring as teams are keyed on Miller and to get her team to dictate the game more than they have been.
“We got enough game experience where players can look to score, we have to get more balance,” says Bressnick. “And we’ll keep working on dictating the pace of the game, focusing on us and doing our own things.”
The Titans stay at home this weekend as they host Caprock Academy on Saturday, January 18 at 1 p.m.
“We should see some success in that game,” says Bressnick. “Should be a good ‘get right’ game for us.”
