Highland girls basketball team turns in watershed season in 2019-20
It may well be a long time before the Highland girls basketball program enjoys a season such as the recently ended 2019-20 campaign.
Although their drive for an IHSA Class 3A Final Four berth ended just one win short of the state tournament, the Lady Bulldogs and coach Clint Hamilton had a season to remember after finishing 27-8 following a super-sectional round playoff loss to Springfield Lanphier.
“I think it (the season) played out pretty similar to what we had in mind. I mean I told the girls from the very beginning of the season that even dating back to the summer I thought they would be a great team and that we could make some noise in the postseason,” Hamilton said. “I thought we had really good balance and we had post players that could rebound and we had four, five, six guards that could play at any given time.”
Scoring balance was never a problem for HHS as junior forward Bella LaPorta (12.3 ppg), senior guard Ellie Brown (9.4 ppg), junior guard Kirsten Taylor (9.4 ppg), senior guard Megan Kronk (9.2 ppg), and junior forward Taylor Kesner (5.2 ppg) gave the Lady Bulldogs a deep and potent offense opposing defenses had to contend with.
LaPorta and Kesner formed a strong one-two punch in the paint that wreaked havoc for opposing teams.
“They were big for us and throw Maddie Clark in there as well as they pretty well dominated the boards, which we needed out of them and them just being steady scoring on the block every night. When they’re locked in, it’s just a huge advantage for us,” Hamilton said.
It also didn’t hurt that Highland’s talented and selfless backcourt of Brown, Kronk, Taylor, Ashlyn Klucker and Liv Wilke consistently got the offense into a solid flow with smart playmaking and solid direction.
“Those three seniors with Ellie and Megan and Ashlyn, we’re going to miss them a lot because that’s a lot of varsity minutes they had there over the last four years,” Hamilton said. “When you can put the game in their hands, you can trust they’re going to make great decisions with the ball and get the team into an offense and defensively they’re going to pressure the other team’s best guards. They just kind of knew exactly what we wanted to do.”
Taylor and Wilke also provided big contributions late in the season and during the Lady Bulldogs playoff run. Wilke knocked down a pair of big shots to key a big early fourth-quarter surge to help HHS defeat Civic Memorial for the Class 3A sectional championship Feb. 27 in Effingham.
“Kirsten was steady all year long and Liv late in the year made some huge shots for us like that sectional game,” Hamilton said. “We’re going to lean on them a lot next year as far as our guard play, hopefully teaching some of those freshmen and sophomores what it’s like at the varsity level.”
Pressure defense helps key season
The offense was pretty much a given with the Lady Bulldogs, but the rise of Highland’s relentless man-to-man press defense really helped elevate them to an elite team this winter.
“Defensively, that’s a group that just bought in and I feel like defense travels and that just leads to easier opportunities to score whether that be a transition or off a steal and it just makes it tough on the other team,” Hamilton said.
Highland started the season well enough but it was a nine-day stretch from Jan. 16-25 with wins over Okawville, Mater Dei, O’Fallon, and Civic Memorial that gave the Lady Bulldogs the 33rd annual Highland Tournament championship and made HHS begin to believe a special season was well within reach.
“That run right there in our tournament was really big for our psyche as a team. I think that really kind of pushed us over the hump,” Hamilton said. “I think with us winning our tournament, that’s when the light bulb went on and we thought we could do something really special.”
Strong regular season finish, nice postseason run
HHS finished the season on a six-game winning streak that included regional wins over Taylorville (75-34) and Jerseyville (51-31) and sectional wins over Mount Vernon (66-30) and Civic Memorial (48-34).
On March 2, that glorious run came to an untimely end as an equally talented and athletic Springfield Lanphier Lions club took down the Lady Bulldogs 57-46 in the Class 3A University of Illinois-Springfield Super-Sectional
“We kind of got on a roll the last three weeks of the season where we were clicking offensively and clicking defensively,” Hamilton said. “Unfortunately in the super-sectional we kind of ran into one of those nights where they had a few things go right and got a little bit of momentum and we did a lot of things to kind of enhance their momentum, but they played really well and you’ve got to tip your cap to them.”
Hamilton will miss his seniors
Despite not making the state tournament, the season will go down as a very special one and Hamilton will miss coaching his departing seniors Brown, Clarke, Klucker, and Kronk.
“These seniors, they were just fun (to coach) and this is my fourth year in the program, so when I came in they were all freshmen,” Hamilton said. “I got to know them really, really well and they kept me on my toes and when they came to practice they played as hard as they could and they always put the team first. That’s what I’ll miss the most (about them).”
This story was originally published March 11, 2020 at 10:39 AM.