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In the end, all it is is a story of what could have been.
That’s the realistic take from Putnam Science Academy girls’ Prep Black coach Devin Hill, whose team faced starts and stops, travel bans, transfers, and injuries, all of which combined to derail what he expected to be a very special year.
“I thought we had the best team in the country,” Hill said this week after his team’s truncated season concluded March 15 with seven wins in eight games. “I just didn’t say anything because there was no need to say anything. We were going to play. I was looking forward to playing certain teams just to show that. And now all it is is a memory basically.”
The biggest domino to fall, as it did for so may teams, was the state mandate essentially banning teams from traveling to play out-of-state opponents. That led to the Mustangs pulling out of a couple of big events in Florida, which just threw everything out of whack, Hill said. A couple of key players transferred out because they took the opportunity to play at a school in the South that was able to play games. Some new players transferred in to fill in the spots. And then there were all the injuries. Hill said the coaches anticipated at the start of the season that minutes-distribution was going to be interesting because his team was so deep; by the end, PSA only had seven players available.
“At the end of the day, we were still able to do more than some teams and play some,” Hill said. “But as far as hitting any type of goals we had, it just wasn’t realistic. It could have been special, I really think that. But we’ve got to move on. And we have.”
Once the goal of playing for a national championship went by the wayside, the focus really shifted to individual development, but still within the team concept.
“I talked to them about margin of error,” Hill said, “and how each time another player wasn’t available, it changed the equation as far as the number of mistakes we can make and get away with, and how it upped the focus that we needed to play with. So the goal was to still be who we were, even without certain players. You’re not giving in, you’re not laying down. You’re still playing with the same confidence you would have if we had the original team.”
The season’s high point, at least in terms of individual performance, came in the team’s second game. That was when senior Yamani McCollough scored her 1,000th career point on a 3-pointer from the corner early in the second half. Ciara Bailey, a postgrad headed to Towson in the fall, put up some big numbers. Jada Mills, a member of the Class of 2023, put her all-around talents on display in a handful of games. So the season wasn’t a complete wash.
“I had it exactly how I wanted it. Not just for this year but for next year too,” Hill said. “It’s hard to find players that you know won’t be scared, that you know have been-there-done-that. So that’s the step back this year, only because we didn’t play enough big games for me to really know who I can count on next year. That’s the frustrating thing. You want to go through a year, even if you’re young and lose, that you can say, ‘OK I know who’s who and what’s what.’ We never really got that chance. That’s just how this season was, and it is what it is. We expect to have a lot of these girls back, we’ll add some more of course.
“And the hope is that we’ll see the whole season through.”
Stephen Nalbandian
Sports Information Director
Putnam Science Academy
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