By Paula Hsiao

Headed into winter break, the KAS varsity girls basketball team currently sits with a 1-1 record in the TISSA season. After winning the season opener, the girls found themselves at home, faced against their long standing rival, the MAK Sharks. Despite an exciting first half that saw the Dragons go up, after a tough 48 minutes, they eventually took the loss. What can this tell us about the state of our team headed into winter break? Should we be worried about our chances at TISSA? Was a loss merely a fluke or an uncovering of a problem much bigger?

In the first game of the season, the Dragons played an away game at IIS against their fairly new roster, seeing as a lot of new faces were seen. The girls ran into some pre-game difficulties with finding the court when they were misled by security into believing that the game was on a separate court. After walking across to the university’s campus, a short bathroom break, and having to dm the other team’s players, they eventually ended up on the hard, green concrete of the court. A stark contrast to the comforts of our school’s polished wooden floor and bright red rims, the outdoor courts took some time to get used to. During layups, the team struggled to adjust; the balls provided was covered with picked up dust and dirt, which made the basketball smooth – hard to grip. Without the traction, the girls’ ball handling was not on par with practice. With a rocky 5 minutes of warm ups, the game was rushed to start, delayed from the wrong court fiasco.

Coach Daniels started a lineup featuring 2 seniors (Alice Wang, Risa Ito), 1 junior (Curie Chiou), and 2 sophomores (Paula Hsiao, Mina Huang). Tip-off began with IIS gaining possession and taking the ball to the hoop for an easy layup to start the game. The girls took control of the game after that ,even though IIS was not far behind. Most early shots came from layups and fastbreaks, while the team struggled to make jumpers. Even though KAS was able to score, the missed jump shots and poor rebounding on both ends of the floor led to IIS gaining a lot of possessions. Throughout the game, this would be a prevalent theme as rebounding was difficult when playing a 1-in 4-out offense. Boxing out was also hard because the physical height advantage of the other team helped them to easily body players out of the way. KAS became more aware of that and put up a good fight in the second half in the efforts of rebounding more.

The Dragon’s new offensive style was a change from last year’s screen oriented plays, but it seemed to work out well for them. The guards often dribbled up, passed to the wings before faking and passing to the centers waiting at the free throw for a quick midrange shot. This would be the team’s bread and butter, earning them a good portion of points, exposing the weaknesses of the zone defense by IIS. Eventually, the Dragons won an organized and team-oriented game, with 9 out of 11 players all scoring, including freshman Sabrina Chang, sophomores Rebecca Lin & Cheyenne Chang, senior Tiffany Lee, with notable rebounding efforts from junior Amber Chang & freshman Sabrina Chang.
A week later, with the first home game of the season [sophomore Mindy Tsai’s debut], the girls faced off against MAK. Starting with a lead of 16-4, the girls looked on fire the first quarter. All shots were falling through, and for the first time this season, the girls looked like a real perimeter threat. They truly started out guns blazing, but eventually, the smoke would clear and the intricacies on both offense and defense would be exposed. So, what went wrong?

Firstly, looking at the offensive set up of the Dragons in the first quarter, it’s noted that the shots made were all created off of quick passes that fed into a catch and shoot offense. Later on in the second half, as the perimeter shots stopped falling through, the girls were left with no viable option to open up scoring. The sharks did well to hold the guards near the 3 point arc, not allowing opportunities to drive into the lane for a quick layup although Alice continued to fight her way through the wall of defenders, twisting her body for the 2. By holding the guards up top, they were able to trap the wings into the sides, where an overabundance of help would eventually lead to a standstill in the offense. The rest of the game played out pretty much the same – the guard brings it up and passes to the wing, who gets stuck on the sideline but can’t find anyone to pass to despite everyone rushing to her aid.

Also, in the first quarter, we held the other team on tight defense and held them to tough shots. As the game progressed, mental and physical battering took its toll on the team. In the second quarter, the girls started to slip and gave up more points to them on things like not getting back in time, not guarding them tight, etc. However, it was really only in the second half that they lost all momentum. By the third and fourth quarter , the Dragons were held almost scoreless against a rejuvenated Sharks team. Defensive effort was lacking on our side; no one was running the extra steps to provide the outlet pass, no one was diving on the floor for the ball inside the scuffle, no one was boxing out and jumping up for rebounds. The team did not have the mental toughness or offensive plays to defend against the comeback efforts from MAK.

With a final game on Wednesday against ICA before winter break kicks off, this will be a chance for the girls to leave off on a high note, although they will surely be practicing over the holidays. During the upcoming game, it will be a chance for the lady dragons to prove to the rest of the league that they have what it takes to take the championship this year.