By Dan Truttschel
Correspondent
There are times in basketball when every shot seems to find its mark.
At other moments, of course, things aren’t quite that easy.
The East Troy High School girls basketball team experienced both ends of that spectrum last week.
Three nights after one of their best shooting efforts in a 57-52 Rock Valley Conference win at Evansville, the Trojans struggled from the field in a 58-43 road loss at Jefferson.
The split moved the Trojans to 4-1 overall and 1-1 in the RVC.
Jefferson took control early Friday night, jumped out to a 33-22 halftime lead and never looked back. East Troy was just 13 for 51 from the field (25 percent), including a 1-for-13 effort from behind the 3-point line.
“We tried to get the ball inside and then work outside for shots,” East Troy coach Jeff Brown said. “We got some shots. Some nights they go in, some nights they don’t.
“We just didn’t shoot very well. They got a little bit of a run on us when we lost some of their best shooters. That hurt us for some baskets. All of a sudden we were down nine, 10, 12 points and it’s hard to come back.”
East Troy tried to battle back in the second half, as the Trojans were outscored by just four points. The Trojans pulled within six, but couldn’t get any closer.
“I think what happens, is you spend so much energy (coming back),” Brown said. “It’s hard to sustain it. You catch your breath, and they come back and all of sudden it’s back to 11 or 12 again.”
Brown said his team’s first loss of the season provided some quality coaching moments – as they usually do.
“I think (with the loss) you learn that attention to detail is more important than you’ve ever had before,” he said. “We don’t have a huge margin of error, so we have to have attention to every single detail to get us over the hump.”
Kayla Casper led the Trojans with 14 points and 10 rebounds, followed by Erin Rice with 12 points and Mackenzie Lindow with 10 points, eight rebounds and six steals.
Lindow is off to a hot start in her sophomore season. In the win over Evansville to start the week, she had 15 points, five steals and seven assists – and currently leads East Troy in all three categories.
“She’s playing really, really well,” Brown said. “She does the bulk of the ball handling for us. She spent a lot of time getting better and better. Her best years, I think, are still ahead.”
Fast start at Evansville
East Troy got out quickly in its RVC opener at Evansville and led 33-17 at halftime before the hosts tightened things up a bit in the second half.
Evansville, which outscored the Trojans 35-24 in the second half, cut the deficit to within four points in the final minute, but East Troy hung on.
The Trojans were 17-for-39 from the field (44 percent) and six-for-11 from behind the 3-point arc. Maddie Rosin led the charge with 18 points, including five 3-pointers.
“We came out in the first half and probably shot as well as we had all year,” Brown said. “(Rosin) got hot, they stayed in a zone, we kept getting her the ball and she kept letting it rip.”
Callie Vogel added eight points, followed by Rice with seven and Casper with nine rebounds.
