By Bryan Bloodworth
BLOOMINGTON – Bloomington High School’s girls basketball team will rely on quickness and defense in hopes of improving on its 10-17 record from a year ago.
“Our strength is going to be quickness and defense,” said third-year coach Tom Whiting. “We’re going to have a very quick team, a pretty young team, but a quick team.”
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The Purple Raiders return leading scorer and rebounder junior Ellie Weltha, who averaged 17.8 points and 8.5 rebounds to earn Big 12 Conferernce first-team honors for a second straight year.
The 6-foot Weltha has 787 career point and needs 608 to break the school’s all-time record held by Latoya Doage.
Other key returnees are 5-11 senior guard Erica Williams, who averaged 6.4 points and 6.7 rebounds a year ago, along with junior guard Olivia Falls, who missed much of last season with a knee injury.
“We missed Olivia last year,” said Whiting. “She had an ACL tear, but she’s healthy and probably one of our quickest players.”
The Purple Raiders will be a junior dominated team with seven on the roster.
“We’re not going to have the long-range shooters like we did the last couple of years,” added Whiting. “Everybody that knows us knows we’re going to be a little undersized. Our two posts are maybe 5-10, 5-11.
“When we go up against teams that are fairly tall such as (Peoria) Richwoods and those types of teams, we’re going to have problems. We’re going to need to make shots because we might only get one shot. And we’ll need to make those, so we don’t have to go for rebounds.”
Whiting said the team’s expectations don’t change.
“I’ve always said we want to win a Big 12 title,” he added. “You look at our schedule and we’re hoping for anywhere from 15 to 18 to 20 wins and I think that’s realistic.”
Bryan Bloodworth can be reached at [email protected]
