The South Hardin girls basketball team recently finished its season 6-16 overall. However, most of the wins came in January and February.
The Tigers started 2-2, but an eight-game losing streak followed. Head Coach Nick Eller says some injuries and other personnel adjustments were factors in the slow start.
“We got thrown some blows to start the year with a couple of girls not going out we thought we were gonna have,” Eller says. “A couple injuries that hurt us. Just kind of got into a weird funk, weren’t in rhythm, weren’t playing together well, because we kind of had some different girls rotating through that we weren’t expecting. And it seemed like every time we’d kind of get to playing better, then we’d have an injury. Ayda Eller fought through some bruised ribs off and on all the whole second half of the season, which didn’t help. Ava Salvo had a couple sickness things that just put her behind. It just felt like we never could get our full group together, never could kind of get in sync.”
The streak ended with a 48-40 win over Gladbrook-Reinbeck on January 20, and half the team’s total wins followed. Eller says his team found its rhythm and played some of its best games in the final few weeks.
“That GR game, I felt like we kind of got everyone on all cylinders going and we’re playing probably the most consistent basketball we played all year. And then I think some of that, like I said, it was just growing pains, kind of getting used to playing with some different people that haven’t played together as much. And then like I said, we’ve got a tough schedule. It’s a good conference. We’ve got two teams down at state right now and a lot of teams that made a pretty good run in the district play here. So kind of the end of the year here, I thought though we were playing our best defense, taking care of the ball a little bit better, still too many turnovers, but taking care of it better than we were. But just shutting teams down and playing some good team defense, I think, was the key to kind of playing our best that we had this year.”
The Tigers went 3-5 in the NICL-West.
