Bartlett rolls in opener
It was a solid opening-night victory for the Bartlett girls basketball team, though the Hawks left themselves room for improvement in Friday's 71-41 win over Oak Forest at the Naperville Central-Benet Tip Off Tournament in Lisle.
The Hawks will need to cut down on their turnovers (20).
They'll have to move their feet better on defense rather than get called for the high number of reach-in fouls coach Denise Sarna characterized as “silly.”
And they will try to rediscover the unselfish passing game that helped them advance to a Class 4A sectional title game last season.
All in all, though, Bartlett wasn't about to nitpick after a 30-point victory in its first game since March.
“First game, a little sloppy,” Sarna said. “Let's just say we're happy.”
No one was happier than the players, who were able to face someone wearing a different jersey for a change.
“After three weeks of practice it's nice to finally get out there,” said Wisconsin recruit Jacki Gulczynski, who scored 19 points to move into second place on the school's all-time scoring list behind Lindsay Schrader.
“We did a good job with our running game and our defensive pressure,” Gulczynski added. “We definitely put pressure on their guards, which caused them to make some turnovers, and we got a lot of fast-break points. That was a big key.”
The Hawks (1-0) set an early tone by jumping to an 8-0 lead on Oak Forest (1-1). Gulczynski, who now has 1,289 career points, figured prominently. The 6-foot-1 senior scored 2 baskets during the run, she fired a long outlet pass to ignite a fast-break layup by Haley Videckis and she stole an inbounds pass right out of the hands of one of the Bengals to start another break.
Bartlett led 13-3 after a quarter. The Bengals never pulled closer than 8 points the rest of the half and trailed 30-17 at halftime. Nine players scored for the Hawks and 13 saw game action on opening night.
Supporting Gulczynski in the scoring department were junior Kristin Conniff (12 points), Videckis (9), junior Lisa Palmer (9) and junior Katie Gutzwiller (7).
“I keep saying that the neat thing is we have a lot of good players on this team, and sometimes it's hard to even get that flow and get everybody the kind of minutes you'd like,” Sarna said. “What we want is the kids coming off the bench, the second unit, to come in and keep the pace of what the first group did. I thought they did a good job.”
Bartlett outrebounded Oak Forest 44-34.
“We crashed the boards and did pretty well,” Conniff said. “We always have boxing out as a main key.”
The Hawks didn't look polished in their half-court sets. However, it was only Game 1.
“We're not is system yet, I don't think,” Gulczynski said. “We don't know each other, who's going to be when and where. That's going to take time, but we're going to get the hang of it and we're only going to go up from there.”
Bartlett resumes Tip Off Tournament action today against Joliet in a game to be played at Metea Valley High School at 1:30 p.m.