By Dan Truttschel
Correspondent
When the Whitewater and East Troy girls basketball teams get together, the game normally comes down to a late possession or critical play to decide the outcome.
For one quarter last week, it looked like that trend again would play itself out – that is until the Trojans put their foot down on the gas pedal.
And from there, they left the Whippets in their dust.
East Troy trailed by three points after the first quarter but outscored Whitewater 18-4 in the second to take control en route to a dominating 68-48 Rock Valley Conference victory.
The win ended the Trojans’ regular season at 21-1 overall. East Troy drew a first-round bye in the Division 3 regional tournament and will open post-season action Friday.
“We focused on defense a little bit (in the second quarter),” East Troy coach Jeff Brown said. “We played a little more zone in the second quarter and made them shoot a little bit more from the outside.
“We made a concentrated effort to make sure we were able to rebound the basketball, and we were able to run out of our zone. That helped us out a lot.”
Brown certainly couldn’t have predicted a blowout over Whitewater, a talented Division 2 team that has been ranked in the state polls all season.
But in the same breath, he also knows when his team, which was ranked second in Division 3 last week, gets going, it can do some heavy damage.
“When we get going, we can knock out a lot of people,” he said. “Sometimes it just gets rolling down the hill, and there’s really nothing you can do to stop it.”
East Troy led 33-22 at halftime, but Whitewater made one more push in the third quarter, as the Whippets cut the deficit to 47-40 heading into the last eight minutes.
But again, the Trojans had the answer, as they closed the game on a 21-8 spurt to ice the victory.
Brown said he thought his team’s slow start may have been partially a result of emotional Senior Night festivities held just before tip off.
East Troy has 10 seniors on the roster who have played together a long time, and escaping those emotions was impossible, Brown said.
“There were a lot of distractions, a lot of stuff going on, a lot of emotions,” he said. “Those kids have played together a long time and have been friends forever. I think it meant a lot to them.”
Rachel Atchison led the Trojans with 20 points, followed by Andrea Olson with 17 and five assists. Breanna Gaspervich added 11 points, eight rebounds, seven assists and four steals, while Alicia Oleson chipped in with nine points, six rebounds and seven assists.
Post-season run next
The focus now turns to the WIAA tournament and what East Troy hopes will be a second straight run to state.
East Troy opens play Friday night when it hosts the winner of Tuesday’s first-round game between Saint Francis and University School Milwaukee.
The winner Friday advances to a regional final Saturday night against the winner of Milwaukee School of Languages and Cedar Grove-Belgium/Tenor.
Should East Troy win Friday, it would host the game Saturday at 7 p.m.
“We’re excited,” Brown said. “I know the kids are looking forward to the tournament. We’re happy to be the number one seed, so we get to play a home game Friday and hopefully, another home game Saturday before we get to the sectional.”
Brown said now isn’t the time to make any major changes to the game plan or his team’s identity.
The Trojans are going to do what they do and see what happens from there.
“We’re going to do what we do best,” he said. “We’re going to try and get the ball going and see if people can keep up with us.
“The best thing we have going is we have four people who can score on any given night and lead us. That’s hard to stop in basketball. You don’t usually have that many bullets in the gun.”
