Girls basketball: After historic season, Fieldcrest’s motto ‘stay humble, stay hungry’

The Fieldcrest girls basketball team is coming off a historic season that produced championships at the campaign-opening Integrated Seed Solutions Tournament and the St. Bede Lady Bruins Christmas Classic, as well as Heart of Illinois Conference regular-season and tournament titles.

But the ultimate accomplishment of the 34-4 Knights squad was a fourth-place finish at the Class 2A State tournament.

Fieldcrest eighth-year coach Mitch Neally said he has borrowed a motto for this season from Jay Wright, a former men’s basketball coach at Villanova University — “stay humble, stay hungry.”

“When I first took over this program, our goal was to win a regional, and we’ve now won three straight,” Neally said. “Now the talk is to get back to state finals. But to be honest, those expectations are talked about outside of the program. As a coach, we are just going to keep doing what we have been and continue to strive to be the best we can be on and off the court each and every day. If we can do that, the rest will take care of itself other than having to have things go your way and have things click at the right times. That’s why last year’s team was successful, in my opinion.

“We haven’t even talked about going back to state; it’s not a specific goal. The goal is to take everything day by day. This is a new team, but we also don’t want to forget what made us a good team last year that had fight and toughness.”

The Knights lost starter Ella Goodrich to graduation, but return mainstays in seniors Ashlyn May (12.1 ppg, 3.5 rpg, 5.0 apg, 3.6 spg, Heart of Illinois Conference first-team selection, second-team pick for the AP and IBCA all-state teams, Carolyn Megow (8.1 ppg, 6.9 rpg, 2.1 apg, 3.0 spg), and Haley Carver (9.9 ppg, 2.8 rpg, 2.2 apg, 1.4 spg, HOIC second team), as well as junior Kaitlyn White (12.1 ppg, 4.5 rpg, 2.9 apg, 2.8 spg) HOIC honorable mention).

“Ella is going to be a hard player to replace, she was such a versatile, overall solid player,” Neally said. “But not much will change with how we play the game. We preach and work on fundamentals first and foremost. We want to be a team that works together and plays solid defense. We want to master the boring, meaning we want to do all the little things better than our opponents.

“I feel the more a team can be fundamentally sound and disciplined, the better chance it has to be ahead on the scoreboard when the final horn sounds. We don’t get to start with more points every game because we have four starters back. We are going to get everyone’s best shot, and that is a great challenge to be a part of.

“We are going to work even harder this season, and I feel we will do that.”

Neally said every player on the squad has improved from a season ago and that he is happy with the depth he’ll have off the bench.

He will be looking for contributions from seniors Abby Harms and Cami Mangan, juniors Riley Burton (returning after ACL injury), Aliah Celis, Ava Marty and Vada Timmerman, sophomore Emily Tooley and talented freshmen Macy Gochanour and Pru Mangan.

“Aliah, Cami and Vada were key players off the bench for us last year,” Neally said. “Every girl on this team — from the starters to the role players — is committed to work on improving their game. When you have that throughout a program, it makes everyone better. They all are here for each other.

“I’m excited to see what this team can do.”

The Knights will open up at in Flanagan with the Falcons-Irish dual-site tournament playing the host Falcons, Marquette Academy and Dwight in pool play with a placement game on Saturday against a respective team from the Seneca side.