Team sets new standard for D-DHS basketball
By Kevin Cunningham
Correspondent
The Delavan-Darien High School girls basketball team went 3-19 a season ago. This year, the team had a 10-game turnaround and went 13-9 during the regular season with first-year head coach, Joe Lopez.
Lopez knew about the expectations placed on his team by people outside of Delavan-Darien. He kept a newspaper article written before the season that mentioned the Comets as finishing last in the Southern Lakes Conference. They finished third, going 9-5 this year compared to last season’s 0-14 record in conference.
“These girls have now set a new standard for Delavan-Darien basketball,” Lopez said. “I knew that if we kept these girls working hard, we could compete. These girls, I started from scratch with them. You could see at the start of the year we started 3-5 and then finished 10-4. We’re going to build off that.
“At the start of the year, sometimes you could see they expected to lose. Changing that mindset in these girls and building their fundamentals, it’s all just starting. We still have a lot of work to do, but we’re heading in the right direction. There’s interest in the program again, and I think that’s a big first step.”
The Comets earned a No. 4 seed and a first round bye in the Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association tournament after its 13-9 season and hosted McFarland on Friday. McFarland entered as the second-place team coming out of the Rock Valley North Conference with a 12-10 record overall.
Behind its energy-inducing crowd, the Comets got off to a 6-0 start. Then, McFarland answered with a 19-9 run, leading the Comets, 19-15, with 6:30 left in the first half. The Comets went on a 19-6 run to close the opening half, and headed into halftime with a 34-25 lead.
From that point on, it was McFarland’s Emma Eckel who stole the show. The 6-foot-2 junior forward proved to be a mismatch for any player Lopez could potentially throw at her. Lopez tried his toughest post defender, Jennah Speth, but at 5-foot-10, she was outmatched height-wise.
Lopez put his freshman starting point guard and daughter, Kat, on Eckel at multiple points, but size proved to be the difference in the post. Eckel made a living in the second half taking the ball from the top of the key and dribble-driving past multiple defenders.
Eckel also shot more than 38 percent from behind the arc over the course of the season, so defenders had to respect her outside game. McFarland clawed their way back over the course of the second half, eventually obtaining a 63-61 advantage over the Comets with just 1:19 remaining after Kat Lopez fouled Eckel on a shot that Eckel made and sank the free-throw for a three-point play.
With the play, Lopez fouled out, and Joe Lopez’s best post defender in Kenna Timmerman, he says, had also fouled out with four minutes left in the game. At halftime, despite the nine-point advantage, Joe Lopez knew the rest of the contest wasn’t going to be all fun and games.
“They’re a good three-point shooting team and nine isn’t a big lead at all,” Joe Lopez said. “It’s three possessions to a team like McFarland. The big problem was we got in foul trouble, and we’re not an overly deep team. We were in quite a precarious situation managing player fouls. The one switch we could have made was to move Timmerman over to guard Eckel.
“But with her already being in foul trouble, we were in a hard place. Truth be told, we were in trouble when Kenna fouled out. We were up five at that point and that was really the turning point in the game.”
McFarland proved to be a difficult cover no matter the way Joe Lopez wanted to defend, as playing a zone defense was considered, but never seriously thought of as an answer because of McFarland’s ability to shoot the three-ball. The opposing team consistently attempted more than 20 three-pointers per game over the course of the season and had four players shoot it at more than 38 percent.
With one minute left, the game was tied at 63, but the rest of the contest went McFarland’s way, proving too hard to defend. With three seconds left though, the Comets were faced with a four-point deficit and Joe Lopez called a timeout after Jaida Speth got fouled and made the first free throw, making the score, 67-64.
He set up a play where the shooter missed the free throw on purpose, and then designed a player to be open at the three-point line to try and tie the game. The play worked to perfection, but the shot never took place as the pass ended up being bobbled, ending the Comets’ season with a 67-64 defeat.
Eckel finished with a game-high 29 points with 19 of them coming in the second half. For the Comets, five seniors had just finished their high school basketball careers but their first-year head coach told them in the locker room after the game that they should be very proud of their season.
“They really worked their tails off,” Joe Lopez said. “We did struggle a little bit in our offense … but honestly, 64 points should have been enough. We knew Jennah could be very effective on offense, and she was. The focus on offense was running it through her in the high post. At the end of the game, we forced a couple shots, hurried and got rushed. Instead of running our offense and getting a good shot, we forced the issue those last couple minutes.
“You know, though, I’m really proud of these girls. I told them in the locker room they should be proud of what they accomplished because they accomplished something nobody thought they could accomplish. Nobody thought they could be competitive, and they proved them wrong.”
