A couple of months together on the hardourt is paying dividends for the Knights.
The Holy Trinity Academy Knights continued their upward trend in senior girls basketball with a bronze medal showing at the Bishop Carroll Cardinals tournament on Feb. 4.
“It’s a nice move in the right direction for the team, we’ve had a couple good weekends in a row,” said Knights head coach Andrew Gustafson. “We’re starting to come together, we’re a fairly new team together, there’s only four girls that have played together in the past and 12 kids that have limited familiarity with eachother.
“We’re starting to find our groove and starting to find eachother a little better in terms of making crisper passes and figuring out what eachother’s strengths are and starting to capitalize on that a little bit.”
In the third place match, the Knights chased the Our Lady of the Rockies Grizzlies by a 57-43 count showcasing a defensive acumen it put forth all weekend.
“We’re happy with the defence all three games,” Gustafson said.
The tournament icebreaker saw the Knights edge the William Aberhart Orange 68-53 followed by a 78-63 defeat in the semifinal to a tough Catholic Central Cougars squad.
“They (Catholic Central) have a couple of prolific scorers and I think we did a great job of shutting down that team,” the coach added. “But they had some kids we had a hard time with and they’re a South team that plays high level competition week in and week out so they’re pretty connected to eachother.”
Grade 10 Paige McNichol earned the tournament heart and hustle award in recognition of a gritty defensive effort with 24 rebounds over three games while Jill Bonertz, who had 12 points, 11 boards and eight blocks in the bronze final, took home the tournament all-star nod.
Gustafson lauded the play of point guard Sadie Bull with 17 steals at the tourney along with a strong showing from post Julianna Aiello who had 58 points in three games
“Julianna was phenomenal for us,” the coach added. “She’s a strong girl and that’s one of the things for us we’re a relatively small team, we’ve got a lot of girls who’ve played really effective five-out motion offences before and have limited experience with big teammates.
“It’s taken us a little bit of time to figure out how to use our inside players like Julianna and I felt like we made a big step in the right direction in being able to us her properly and she just came unglued this weekend, it was pretty awesome to watch.”
