Kelseyville’s offense stalls down the stretch against visiting Huskies in Division 3 playoffs
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KELSEYVILLE >> As much as the Kelseyville Knights struggled through the first three quarters Tuesday night against the Fortuna Huskies in the opening round of the North Coast Section Division 3 girls basketball playoffs, head coach Tim Conrad’s team still had every opportunity to beat the Huskies and extend its season.
In the end, the Knights simply couldn’t find anything that worked, and the Huskies weren’t going to hang around waiting for Kelseyville to figure it out. They used a 15-2 fourth quarter to end the Knights’ season, 47-29.
“A tough night shooting, a tough night getting free throws,” Conrad said as an otherwise successful Kelseyville season that ended with a 17-9 record and a share of the North Central League I championship, which was Kelseyville’s one and only goal season’s start.
“I told them after the game not to let this ruin their season. I had hoped we would be able to win league, and we did that. That was a huge stepping stone. The program is headed in the right direction.”
Kelseyville girls basketball has enjoyed many stellar seasons in the past, just not recently. In fact, the school posted its two worst records ever during back-to-back seasons, going 1-20 (1-12 in league) in 2021-22 and 2-23 (1-13) in league in 2022-23 before rebounding last season with a 15-11 mark (7-5 league) under then-head coach Jim Salmina. One problem has been coaching turnover. Not counting the 2020-21 season that was canceled because of COVID-19, the Knights have had five different coaches in their last five full seasons. Conrad, a first-year coach, will be back next year, hopefully ending that rapid-fire coaching turnover.
Against Fortuna, a team the Knights lost to 32-30 in a non-league game Jan. 11 at home, Kelseyville again struggled with the Huskies’ man-to-man defense, which was not a surprise, according to Conrad.
“We’ve had trouble playing against the man all season,” Conrad said. “We’ve had some success against it at times, but generally we’ve struggled.”
Kelseyville’s defense, which has done a good job in its own right holding teams down this season, had a big problem all game long — boxing out the Huskies down low. Fortuna parlayed several offensive rebounds into points while the Knights shot poorly from the paint, missing many shots from right underneath the basket, including multiple-shot possessions.
Kelseyville also shot poorly at the free-throw line, going 6-for-16 to Fortuna’s 7-for-8, another thing that didn’t surprise Conrad.
“We haven’t been a good free-throw-shooting team, around 40 percent,” he said.
Other than the 10 points scored by Ashlyn (AJ) Wurm in the second quarter, easily the Knights’ best quarter of the game, no one else had much success getting their shots to drop.
“AJ was exhausted by the end of the game, that’s why she was missing those free throws,” Conrad said of the junior guard’s struggles from the line late. She was the team’s leading scorer with 12 points.
Fortuna opened up as much as a 14-point lead – 22-8 – early in the second quarter before Wurm almost single-handedly brought the Knights back, including two 3-pointers, the latter of which cut the Huskies’ lead to 22-21 with 2:09 left in the first half. After missing several chances to take the lead, Kelseyville went into halftime down 25-21.
Free throws by Wurm and Grace Hobbs and a Nyejzniya Krohn basket during a low-scoring third quarter by both teams had the Knights trailing only 28-25 late in the third period, but it was all Fortuna from that point as Kelseyville’s offense stalled.
Leading 32-27 going to the fourth quarter, it was all Huskies following an exchange of baskets that made it 35-29. Fortuna finished with a 12-0 run as the Knights simply couldn’t get a shot or a free throw to drop – and most of those shots were from 6 feet or less.
While the Knights weren’t at full strength for the game – one of their top players, senior Briana Davis, was out with a knee ligament sprain – Conrad said he doesn’t know if even her presence would have made enough of a difference, though he certainly would have loved to find out.
“She’s not a big scorer, but she gets a lot of blocks and steals that we’ve been able to turn into transition baskets, something we really missed tonight,” Conrad said. “She created a lot of things for us during the season that really picked us up in different games.”
While Kelseyville’s season, and Conrad’s first year as the Knights’ coach is now complete, he said the future is bright for the Knights, who return several starters – juniors Wurm and Mati Mateer (six points) among them as well as sophomore Hobbs – and will inherit a considerable amount of talent off this year’s league-champion junior varsity team, which included Hobbs before she was called up to the varsity.
“I think you’re going to see a lot of good things from this group before they’re done,” Conrad said. “I just want them to know, especially my seniors, and they may not realize it right now, what a great year they had. I couldn’t be any prouder of what they accomplished this season.”
Olivia Hommer, a senior, finished with six points. It was also the final high school game for other varsity mainstays such as Davis, Krohn and Cali Schnabl.
“I’m going to miss them a lot,” Conrad said of his seniors.
Fortuna (15-12) now advances to the quarterfinals Friday in Middletown at 7 p.m. Middletown defeated Mt. Eden of Hayward 52-43 in another first-round game Tuesday.
