Gregory Dorgan takes the helm of the MHS girls basketball program with nothing but optimism

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Carson Beck, Assistant Sports Editor

Hired in the spring, Gregory Dorgan enters his first season as the head coach for the varsity girls basketball team. Dorgan plans on incorporating offensive and defensive strategies from his previous coaching experiences while holding the players to high expectations.

 

Q: What are your strategies in offense and defense that you might want to incorporate at Mundelein?

A: I’ve always been a man to favor defensive principles. I was excited to be able to do that with our girls in this program, and I think that sense of toughness, and some full court pressure and half court pressure goes a long way to make up for any deficiencies a team might have. You can always get the ball back on defense and create a turnover even if you make some mistakes offensively. I don’t like to use the word fast, to me it means out of control, so I like to talk to our players about playing quick. Having a quick transition, a quick break to the basket and if we can score on the beginning of the shot clock.

 

Q: Can you describe your short term goals and long term goals?

A: This year I want to make sure that this senior class has a memorable experience regardless of how we perform. Based on what we’ve done over the summer, we definitely set the groundwork that we hopefully can surprise people and make some waves in the conference and be considered in the upper half of the conference as opposed to anything else. In our long term, we’ve got our junior, sophomore and freshmen classes, and there are some core players in those. There’s not one class that has only one or two players coming out; there are some strong cores coming out. I’m looking forward to them coming together eventually at the varsity level.

 

Q: What was your team’s outcome in the summer league?

A: We were right around .500, won a couple in a row and lost a couple in a row, but it all accumulated to a tournament we went to [in] Indiana, and we won a game each Friday and Saturday of our tournament, and we were competitive in all of our games but one. We finished second in our tournament, and we beat teams that we previously lost to in the tournament.

 

Q: What is your previous record and experience with the North Suburban Conference?

A: Last year we played Zion-Benton [High School] in our regional, and it resulted in a victory. We also saw a lot of those teams this summer and played those teams in the non-conference games in previous years.

 

Q: Who are some expected leaders?

A: We’re going to have some senior leadership from Ellie Maldonado, Kelsey Austwick, Hannah Buscher, Sydney Blackmer and Amanda Garcia. We also have great junior leadership from Madison Parola, Eve Slomka and Rachel Fischer. We also expect a lot from sophomore Morgan Frank this year as well.