St. Vincent-St. Mary girls basketball team creating a special bond this season
AKRON, Ohio - Eat or Starve.
Those three simple words are meant to define the St. Vincent-St. Mary girls basketball team this season.
"Our slogan this year on the back of our shooting shirts is 'eat or starve,'" STVM head coach Carley Whitney said. "We either all eat or we all starve. The seniors came up with that slogan. At the end of the day, they want to do things together and it shows."
It definitely showed on Saturday afternoon at the LeBron James Arena, as STVM defeated Lutheran East 62-24 to move to 6-0.
Plenty of players ate for the Fighting Irish on Saturday, as they normally do. Nine players scored and four players had eight or more points, led by Erica King with 15, Kendal Batchik with 11, Melania Cornute with 10 and Ka'Miah Pryor with eight.
The offensive wealth being spread around is done by design.
"Here at St. Vincent St. Mary High School, we have an equal opportunity to score offense," Whitney said. "We don't want to be a scouter’s dream where it is predictable where one person is taking all the (offensive) load. Our schedule is extremely difficult. The level of competition that we play, we just can't have one (scorer). You need three, you need four, you need five. So we are built for equal opportunity offensively and equal effort defensively."
The players completely bought in from day one and are enjoying the STVM style of play.
"It's a lot of fun," said Batchik, who hit a pair of 3-pointers in the game. "We just love to spread the ball. And really anyone could score at any point. We just want to play team basketball."
The unselfish play and willingness to defer to a teammate is something their head coach has noticed as well.
"This group is extremely passionate and determined to win, period," Whitney said. "They have an innate ability to flip on things together. And they don't care who gets it. That's one of the things that is so endearing about this team and is so fun is it doesn't matter who gets the ball, who scores, or who gets the stop."
The stops came in bunches for the STVM defense on Saturday after the first quarter in which the Fighting Irish led just 14-12. But a change defensively proved to be just what the Fighting Irish needed as they won the second quarter 18-1 and the third quarter 21-7 to lead the game 53-22 after three quarters.
"Lutheran East is very athletic, they're quick, they have good guard play," Whitney said. "And I think (in the first quarter) we were over anticipating and gambling in the passing lane and trying to maybe get away with some things that their speed makes up for. So we had to just get back to playing the principles, get back to playing disciplined, and play our style of basketball and not at their pace."
The change in defense doesn't work without the players having faith in each other, however, and every girl who gets on the floor in green and gold trusts the other four girls on the court with her.
"I think that when you see it start to flip and you see our defense start to really lock in and the jaws start to come, that's because they trust each other," Whitney said. "They know where each other are, they don’t have to look. They trust that the next person is going to get the next pass or they trust that they're going to be there for the layup."
St. Vincent-St. Mary girls basketball head coach Carley Whitney watches on during a game against Ursuline on January 18, 2023. Photo credit: Jeff Harwell
Jeff Harwell, SBLive Sports
That isn't just coach speak, it is something that the girls believe in as well.
"The thing about this group is that we all just trust each other," King said. "So no matter what happens, we all trust each other on the court, we trust each other when we make the pass and when we play defense we just trust each other enough to do what we have to do."
While this team has had a bond from the first day of practices, they grew even closer together earlier this month on a trip to Los Angeles, where the Fighting Irish boys and girls basketball teams played in The Chosen One's event.
"When you're in LA, you just have your team and you don't know anybody out there," King said. "So we just spent time together. We went to different places together out there and played that game together. So yeah, the LA trip brought us closer."
The way the team feels about one other was no more apparent than in the fourth quarter on Saturday with the Fighting Irish leading 59-24 and the starters sitting on the bench. Freshman Taylor Rogers-Williams knocked down a 3-pointer that resulted in an eruption of cheers and screams from her teammates.
Those relationships are important for the the head coach, and Whitney just smiles when talking about the group of young women she gets to coach this season and feels it will also help them later in life.
"They love each other and they are friends on and off the court," Whitney said. "When you're in girls basketball, you have to make it about a sisterhood. Girls are different. You have to get them to play above themselves for something bigger. But truly this group respects each other and they trust each other. And to me that's going to pay so many dividends not only down the road basketball wise, but when you're becoming a woman."
But those days will come in the future. As for the current day, the coach continues to utter four words when talking about her team.
"This group is special," Whitney keeps saying.
