Girls basketball: Summer Jam a good test for Sycamore, Kaneland, host Ottawa

OTTAWA — Even though it’s summer, there was no absence of solid girls basketball on display at the eight-team Lady Pirate Summer Jam in Kingman and Love gyms Thursday at Ottawa High School.

Along with the Pirates, the field included teams from Sycamore, Kaneland, Washington, Metamora, Rock Island Alleman, Rochester and Hononegah.

“In this program, we pride ourselves as being a tough defensive team, but the summer, I feel, is for us to work on pushing the ball up the floor, running lanes, sharing the ball, and if you’re open shoot it.”

—  Brent Moore, Ottawa girls basketball coach

“I feel like this is a fantastic shootout,” Ottawa coach Brent Moore said. “Every team here has a solid, quality program, and each is coming off a successful season last year. That’s what we wanted, eight very good teams, that even though it’s summer, each is going to come after you.

“Nearly every game has been really competitive, and we’ve had almost all the games come down to the last few minutes including a couple going to overtime. I really feel every team here is going to leave here better, and that’s what this is all about.”

According to Ottawa assistant coach Joe Frye, the combined record of the teams at the shootout from a season ago was 176-79, with three winning regional championships and four losing in regional finals.

Hononegah won the title with a 62-46 victory over Ottawa, which had defeated Metamora and Washington.

“Our focus during the summer is a lot on offense, and we save the defensive work and aspects for the clamp down in November,” said Moore, his club finishing 25-7 last season, including a loss to Geneseo in a Class 3A regional final. “In this program, we pride ourselves as being a tough defensive team, but the summer, I feel, is for us to work on pushing the ball up the floor, running lanes, sharing the ball, and if you’re open shoot it.

“We have high-IQ girls who understand things like spacing and just basketball in general. This is a very committed group of girls. Everything we have in the summer, if possible, they’ve been here. We’ve seen so much improvement across the team as a whole, with a number of individual players working hard to get better.”

Sycamore, which was 21-13 last season and won the program’s third consecutive regional championship, topped Rochester, but lost to Hononegah.

“At the high school level, you get a new crop and a new dynamic going into every season,” Sycamore coach Adam Wickness said. “Today we didn’t have two of our three best outside shooters that may have helped us against Hononegah, but that also gave some of the girls that may be rotational players a chance to gain a little more experience and a little more confidence. We are just grateful to be asked and have a chance to come to a shootout like this one with so many really, really good programs.

“We’ll have three starters back, a number of other girls who saw minutes last season and a few younger players that will more than likely be up on the varsity team. We are going to want to play fast, and we have a handful of girls that are pretty good shooting it from beyond the arc.

“Like I told the girls, the summer is about just playing basketball. We’ll get to the intricacies when the real practices start.”

Kaneland, which is coming off a 15-17 campaign which saw the season end on a loss in the regional final to the Spartans, lost in overtime to Washington and on a last-second shot to Metamora.

“We’ve played a number of games already this summer, but today was by far the best games we’ve played,” said Kaneland coach Brian Claesson. “We moved the ball really well on offense and did a great job of talking and communicating on defense. We were missing a couple of girls that we are expecting to be key contributors when the season starts later this year, but we had a number of girls really step up and play well. I think we’ll have a nice mix of experience and youth heading into the season.

“Coming into this summer, with last season being my first year as head coach, it’s obviously been a totally different situation. The program’s foundation is already in place, so like even today we were able to run some sets and inbounds plays on the offensive end that the girls already know.

“Summer workouts and sessions like here today, in my mind, are about getting out on the floor against a good opponent and seeing what we can do. I like what I saw from the group today for sure.”