‘Starting to believe.’ Bryan Station girls making their mark under new head coach.
First-year Bryan Station girls’ basketball coach Serena Sandusky has a young team that has delivered a mixed bag of results so far, but it also hit a pretty significant milestone Tuesday night.
The Defenders’ 42-40 road win over Sayre pushed their record within the 42nd District to 5-1, guaranteeing a winning mark in that league for the first time since Sandusky led the team as a standout senior guard in 2013.
When they beat Scott County 67-48 on Jan. 15, it broke a 12-game losing streak to the Cardinals dating to 2016. That 2016 season was also the last time Bryan Station finished a year with a winning record (20-16) — its only winning record since Sandusky’s playing days.
Even during that year, as Bryan Station made a spectacular run to the 11th Region finals, its regular-season district record in 2016 was 0-5.
This year, Bryan Station’s overall record is 7-8. So count Sandusky far from satisfied.
“Oh, we can get better. We can always get better,” Sandusky said. “I think we know what we have every day in practice, and these kids are starting to believe it more and more.”
Sandusky got some good and some bad in the win over Sayre. The Defenders’ full-court defensive pressure bothered the Spartans early and helped Bryan Station build a 27-16 halftime lead.
But things got nervy down the stretch as the Spartans (8-10) rallied to tie it late despite playing without their standout junior guard, Kylee Dennis, who is sitting out a few more games with an injured hand.
“We were missing easy shots, layups, free throws, anything in the paint, but we kept our heads together and we came together as a team and we did what we had to do to win,” said senior guard Tania Woodall, who contributed nine points and a potentially game-saving block of a Sayre shot in the game’s final seconds.
Bryan Station will finish its district schedule with Henry Clay on the road on Saturday and Scott County at home on Feb. 2 as it tries to keep pace with Frederick Douglass for the top seed in the district playoffs.
Douglass won at Bryan Station 62-48 on Dec. 11. The Defenders returned the favor with a 77-62 win at Douglass three weeks later, a victory that signaled there could be something special about this year’s team.
Still, Sandusky’s players have also had some head-scratching losses.
“The core of our team is young,” she said. “So it’s one day at a time. One practice at a time.”
Woodall, the team’s lone senior starter, is enjoying the most success of her high school career even though her 13.8 points per game average is down slightly from last season.
“Honestly, I’m having a lot of fun with the girls that I’m with,” she said. “The chemistry on the team is great. We all love each other and we just have fun every day.”
Kailyn Gentry, a sophomore, is second on the team in scoring, averaging 9.3 points per game, but was held to four points against Sayre. Jailenn Green, a freshman, led the team with 12 points, four above her average. She made two free throws to give her team the 42-40 lead with 30.7 seconds left.
After such a close victory, Sandusky hesitated to speculate about how the rest of the season would play out.
“I think we got some young kids who are finding their feet. We’ve just got to build and keep building,” she said. “I wouldn’t say I’m disappointed in how we’re playing, but I wouldn’t say I’m excited either. I’m OK, There’s room for improvement.”
