Eric Spruill
It’s a tough road and North head coach Kevin Korstjens knows it. But when it takes 10 years to get back to the state tournament, no one expects it to be easy.
The No. 5-ranked Lady Huskies (23-2) take on No. 2 Norman (20-6) tonight at 8:30 in Yukon.
And should North survive that game, they would likely face No. 1-ranked Midwest City in the semifinals.
Not exactly the easiest route to the finals. But it’s the path that the Lady Huskies prefer.
“If you’re going to be the best, you want to be beat the best,” Korstjens said. “You don’t want anyone else to beat the top team, then have them say “we took care of the hard part for you” if we are fortunate enough to get past Norman, we want to play Midwest City.”
There is one sure formula that Korstjen and his staff has relied on all season. If North wins two of three categories, his team is 22-1 on the season.
Those categories are turnovers, rebounds, and making more free throws than the opponent.
“We’ve won all but one game by winning two out of three of those categories. The lone game we didn’t win was against Memorial,” Korstjens said.
The Lady Huskies are the new kids on the block, while Norman will be making its fourth straight state tournament appearance. But the second-year head coach doesn’t see that as a problem.
“As long as we stay focused. That’s the problem at state, everyone is good. The teams that stay focused and avoid the distractions are the ones that win. We haven’t had a problem with that all year. We’ve been focused in every game we’ve played. The one’s that we lost, same thing, we were focused, we lost by five and seven points, we were focused, some things just didn’t fall our way,” Korstjens said. “Some teams may have a problem focusing if they haven’t been there, but I don’t see that being us.”
North has won 17 straight, and has defeated three teams in the field, with five of the teams wins coming against state qualifiers.
Norman is set up pretty similar to North. They like to get the ball into to Ashley Bruner and Jeanie Ramon.
“They like for Bruner to touch it as much as possible. They have some ability from the outside, they can be pretty streaky. They like to get the inside-outside game going like we do,” Korstjens said. “One advantage we have is that we’ve played and won at Yukon. They have state tournament experience though, but we have played at Yukon, which will help. And we’ve got senior guards, which always helps.”
Basketball fever is spreading at North, where this is the first time in the school’s history that both teams are playing in the state tournament.
“It’s crazy, this is the first time where nobody is talking about soccer or the other sports at this point. Normally as you approach spring break, everybody has already moved on to other sports,” Korstjens said. “It’s absolute madness, right now.”
