Less than 48 hours before his Stillwater girls' basketball team's first state tournament game, coach Willie Taylor paused Monday's practice to introduce a play he invented on the spot.
No dry-erase board. No film review. Just a few verbal instructions before Taylor sat back to watch.
"He's the only coach to do something like that," sophomore guard Alexis Pratt said. "But we have a really smart team."
Taylor, who coached St. Paul Central to state titles in 2007 and 2008, knows his players have grown into ones able to handle such late-season tweaks. Stillwater's 21-game winning streak indicates its talents. But it's in practice where the Ponies have made the biggest strides.
The reward: Stillwater reached its first state tournament since 1988. The No. 2-seeded Ponies (26-2) tip-off against Shakopee (20-9) at 2 p.m. Wednesday in a Class 4A quarterfinal at Williams Arena.
Expectations were high to reach this point. But early-season losses to strong Hopkins and Wayzata programs taught Ponies what they needed to improve their physicality, court communication and sharing of the ball.
Those hard-learned lessons made Stillwater a more complete team. Role players have developed to supplement the big three of Pratt, junior forward Liza Karlen and senior guard Sara Scalia, Gophers coach Lindsay Whalen's first committed recruit.
"We've been winning games, but we wanted to get better at the same time," Scalia said. "We've all got the same mind-set and we've been doing that in practice throughout the course of the year."
