After a long winter holiday break, the Washington Demons are back on the basketball court tonight and looking for some conference home cooking when they welcome Fort Madison to town in a pair of games you can hear on KCII.
The Washington girls come in with a record of 3-6 but have won two of their first three conference games. Oaklee Sobaski has been a big part of that, scoring almost 13 points per game in three conference contests and averaging just under eight points a game for the whole season.
Fellow junior Adalyn Long leads the team in scoring, assists and steals, and they’ll need her all-conference talent to take down a Fort Madison team that is undefeated in Southeast Conference play and 5-2 overall.
Demons head coach Shannon Rugg tells KCII Sports he believes his team’s three-point shooting can be a big key tonight and throughout the second half of the season.
“The whole group of them,” Rugg says, “when their feet are set and we make a good pass to [the shooter], we make the shot more times than not, so that’s something we’ll stress, just making sure we have our feet ready to catch and shoot.”
The Washington boys found their groove just before the new year, ripping off four straight wins to get to 5-3 and start conference action unbeaten.
Senior Logan McDole leads the team by scoring almost 12 points per contest and leads the team in assists, while junior Drew Conrad and sophomore Nic Stone are each averaging a tick over 10 points per game.
Head coach Collin Stark says that the Demons’ 3-0 start to league play has come from becoming a more connected unit and staying true to their mantra.
“When we started 1-3,” Stark says, “we had a lot of tough teams that we had to play where there was a lot of games that could go either way. Our slogan for this year is ‘Ball In’ or ‘be all-in,’ and, as we were getting closer and closer to the break, I thought we were starting to really pass the ball a little bit better [and] look for that open person, making the extra pass, and I think that’s started to show on the scoreboard.”
Washington will be facing a Fort Madison squad that is 2-2 and has split its first two Southeast Conference games. You can catch both matchups this evening as the Demons duel the Bloodhounds on 106.1 FM KCII and streaming on KCIIradio.com and the KCII1 app, starting with the Countdown to Tip-Off at 5:30.