HOWELL — While all but one player for the Howell girls basketball team will play in her first regional game tonight, coach Tim Olszewski says in one respect, it’s like any other game.
“It comes to we’ve got to do what we got to do,” he said. “We play hard, and hopefully good things happen. We’ve gone through the film with the girls, diagrammed eveyrting and done a walkthrough. Now it’s time to play and we’re anxious to get after it.”
The Highlanders (20-2) will take on Farmington Hills Mercy (16-6) in a regional semifinal at Novi High School at 5 p.m.
The game is the first half of a basketball-hockey doubleheader on The Livingston Post. It will be followed by a hockey quarterfinal between Hartland and Birmingham Brother Rice.
The Highlanders will play no more than two games this week, in contrast to a four-games-in-eight-days stretch that ended with a district championship win over Brighton at Hartland on Fridya.
“This has seemed like a vacation,” Olszewski said Monday. “We had a grueling grind the last week ago. It’s given them some time off, and we had a phenomenal practice (Sunday). A lot of energy. We’ll be anxious and ready to go (tonight).”
Howell takes on a Mercy team which won a district for the fourth year in a row last week.
“We’ve watched some film on them,” Olszewski said. “They’re a pretty aggressive team. They like to put up multiple defenses and hold up clipboards with numbers on them to determine the defense they will fall in to. We’ve identified their tendencies a little bit and what they like to do, or what they appear they like to do.”
Howell is off to its best start since the fall of 1996, when the Highlanders went to the Class A finals.
This year’s team is young; four sophomores see significant time, three of them starters.
But, at this time of year, coaches tend not to talk about sophomores who have seen as much time as Howell’s have as young players any more.
“These sophomores have grown up a lot this year,” Olszewski said. “I think Lexie (Miller), in particular, has really started to come on strong and take care of the basketball and really manage the game. I think Leah (Weslock) has done the same and Amanda (Corsten, who is the team’s sixth man) has started understanding situations a little better.
“Teams press you because they want to speed things up and get you to do things you don’t want to do,” he continued. “Our goal is to break the press at half-court, take a deep breath and do what we do.”
On the other end, Olszewski is confident.
“We hang out hat on defense,” he said. “We feel that no matter what a team does, we can respond to it. Our patience will be key. If we work the ball quickly and take what’s given to us, I think we can be pretty successful. If we get caught up in throwing the ball around and the traps (Mercy) wants to create, it could be an interesting evening.”
In the second semifinal, Milford (10-11) will take on Northville. The winners play for the regional title at 7 p.m. Thursday.
