Iowa City West girls basketball preview

Just one game separated the Iowa City West girls basketball team from the Iowa High School state tournament a year ago.

And anytime a team gets close to reaching the pinnacle of a season’s worth of competition it becomes hard to forget how it felt to fall short.

Lady Trojans head coach B.J. Mayer would be the first to say the feeling was not a good one, but something the 2009-10 West High squad can build off of.

“In sports, it’s really difficult to get to the next level until you’ve been there,” Mayer said. “Nobody in the West High girls basketball program has ever been to the state basketball tournament. So to get to the [Sub-State Final] last year was a huge confidence builder.”

The biggest issue facing the Women of Troy, however, will be how they replace their two leading scorers – Emma Krieger-Kittle and Madison Sedecky – from a year ago.

Krieger-Kittle led the team with an average of 15.3 points-per-game last year and also led the way in rebounds with 152.

Sedecky was a close second with 150 boards and 10.4 points-per-game. She also led the team with 45 three-pointers and shot 36.6 percent from beyond the arc.

With that in mind, Mayer said his players are going to have to grow up quick, particularly with as many as three new faces in the starting line-up to start the season. However, the coach has confidence in his athletes’ ability to handle the pressure in stride.

“Just getting the kids to play together because we have such a new background of kids,” Mayer said. “Getting our sophomores and our seniors on the same page has been the thing we’ve been working on in open-gym right now.”

The team will rely on a trio of seniors to carry the load.

Mackenzie Reed, Kristin Fomon, and Courtney Fritz all made significant contributions for West in 2008-09 and will be looked upon by Mayer to get the Women of Troy rolling early.

“We’re really looking for them to be our leaders,” Mayer said.

As far as a game plan, Mayer said the Lady Trojans will be shorter than most teams in the Mississippi Valley Conference. Thus the Women of Troy will be relying on an aggressive press defense and their ability to shot the ball from three-point-land.

“I think we’re going to be a lot deeper. Our goal is to play 10 kids,” Mayer said. “We’re not very tall. Our tallest kid is probably 5-10 and that’s going to be one of our weaknesses – defending people inside. So that’s one of the things we’re going to have to do is to try to create that tempo to almost be a little chaotic and crazy.”