Poised Eastview avenges earlier loss

The Bloomington Kennedy girls' basketball team is the kind of in-your-face, score-at-will intimidating group that regularly shows up big when it matters most.

And Eastview's team has found a way to figure the Eagles out in South Suburban Conference play.

Six weeks after a potential game-tying shot against Kennedy barely missed the mark, the Lightning had good fortune fall its way last weekend. Taking a halftime cue from first-year coach Melissa Guebert, Eastview kept its composure early and often in the final 18 minutes to win by two points. The victory pulled the Lightning into a first-place tie with Kennedy.

"They are so talented and athletic; you can get up on that team and they will turn it around quick on you," Guebert said. "We never let our guard down. We stayed disciplined."

Down a point at halftime, Guebert wrote "Poised" on the locker room board.

"That was going to be the key to our game, and I felt it was slipping a little bit," she explained.

Eastview players responded by starting the second half on a 10-1 run.

It came three days after a brutal 44-point home loss to top-ranked Hopkins. Guebert worried her team would respond with another lackluster effort at Kennedy, away from friendly fans.

She got the exact opposite and Eastview entered this week 11-1 since.

"I knew right then we were going to have a good season," she said. "Our kids played incredibly hard. It was a shifting game of the season."

You might guess the rematch is on her list of favorites, too, and you'd be right about that. But there's another not-so-obvious one as well.

The Lightning played Sioux Falls Washington in the semifinals of the St. Olaf tournament over the holidays. Eastview came away with a 17-point victory over the Warriors, a South Dakota state tournament contender and Guebert's high school rival while she was at Sioux Falls Lincoln in the 1980s.