By Mike Stanford
Executive News Editor
The Prospect girls’ basketball team played 832 minutes, 104 quarters and 26 games in the 2014-2015 regular season. The Lady Knights finished with a 24-2 record in their first 20 win season since 1990.
However, senior Catherine Sherwood isn’t thinking about her team’s past achievements heading into the postseason.
“The first important test we’re going to have to face is just starting over,” Sherwood said. “As our coach [Ashley Graham] always says to us, once the playoffs start, everyone forgets your record and what you did in the [regular] season. We still have to play just as [well] as we did all season and not back down because our record was so good.”
The Lady Knights enter their postseason campaign as the two seed in the Palatine sectional. They started the tournament with a 50-25 win over Grayslake North.
While the first game was a commanding victory, assistant varsity basketball coach Paul Schoenbeck anticipates the first opponent to test the Lady Knights will be the Rolling Meadows Mustangs, who are known for a tenacious defense. Rolling Meadows has a 19-7 record and is led by sophomore Kyra Spiwak.
If the Lady Knights beat Rolling Meadows, they will accomplish one of the goals they set before the start of the season: becoming regional champions.
Following the Regional finals, Prospect will likely take on the Hersey (22-6) in the Palatine sectional semifinals. The Lady Knights beat the Huskies twice earlier this season, but only by a combined margin of seven points.
“It’s always hard to beat a team three times in one season,” Schoenbeck said. “We just have to stick to what helped us be successful in the first two games: playing good defense and taking care of the ball.”
Following Hersey, the Lady Knights should get a rematch against a Fremd team (23-4) that handed Prospect their only two losses.
Fremd is led by senior Haley Gorecki and junior Bryana Hopkins who have committed to play college basketball at Duke and Northwestern Universities, respectively.
According to Schoenbeck, Prospect tends to score a large amount of their points shots close to the basket, and Fremd used its height in the first two matchups to shut down the paint.
“To beat a team like Fremd would be a huge accomplishment,” Schoenbeck said. “We’re [saying that] we want to get to the sectional final, and we want to give Fremd everything we’ve got. We want to play them for a third time and take them down.”
If the Lady Knights win the Palatine sectional, only three victories would separate them and a state championship.
However, the team is fighting for more than just victories as they start the playoffs.
“When we do lose a game, our season’s over,” Sherwood said. “At this point we are playing to stay together as opposed to before [where we just played] to win because our time is limited.”