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player ready...A great basketball coach deserves a great basketball team.
Dorothy Gaters doesn’t have one this year, but it may not matter. Marshall’s coaching icon may still wind up with a record eighth Illinois girls state basketball title.
Gaters has been in charge at Marshall for 33 seasons, long enough to have coached it in the one-, two- and now four-class systems. She and Marshall returned to the state finals Friday for the first time since 2002, kicking off the Class 3A Final Four era by outlasting Quincy Notre Dame 76-73 in overtime at Illinois State.
Marshall will meet Freeport, a 41-35 winner over Montini, in the championship game Saturday.
The Commandos didn’t exactly storm into the 3A finale. They made only 15 of 27 free throws and had defensive lapses that allowed Notre Dame to shoot 55 percent. Fortunately for Marshall, its opponent shot just 38 times, thanks to its 29 turnovers.
“We do a lot of boneheaded things,” Gaters said. “The worst today was our defense in the paint.”
This has been a tough season for Gaters on and off the floor. In October former boys basketball coach Lamont Bryant sued, among others, Marshall and Gaters to get his job back after principal Juan Gardner fired him as coach.
Then in January, a fight involving players from Marshall and Milwaukee Vincent ended their girls game at Young right before halftime in the MLK Dream Classic, which honors Martin Luther King Jr.
“A little adversity just makes you stronger,” Gaters said. “As I have said before and will say again, if those are the worst things that happen, I will have had a blessed life.”
Adversity seems to have made this Marshall team (25-7) stronger as well. It started the season 3-4 but has won 14 of its last 15 games.
It has talent in the likes of junior center Adrienne GodBold, senior forward Sarah Rogers and senior guard Terranika Reynolds, but no one such as Janet Harris, Kim Williams or Cappie Pondexter, transcendent stars from past Marshall teams. Particularly lacking Friday was a Pondexter-caliber floor leader, which helped explain the Commandos’ frequently flawed decision-making.
“We’ve had so many talented teams, five and six Division I players were nothing for us to have,” Gaters said. “In the absence of that it’s like squeezing lemons sometimes. We lack talent, we lack basketball IQ, which I chide them about all the time.”
Gaters, whose teams have won a state-record 880 games, related this with a tone that combined resignation with exasperation, and she admitted that her players drive her nuts.
“I tell them the court is a classroom, and, hopefully, their learning curve will increase,” she said. “I don’t know; I don’t know.”
Gaters’ basketball support group has helped her cope with these various travails. Courtney Hargrays, who was one of Gaters’ assistants before replacing Bryant and is still listed on her roster, joined her on the bench Friday. So did assistant coach Jennifer Jones, another former star, and longtime aide Gwen Howard.
“They are all Marshall people,” she said proudly. “It’s a family.”
It took the Commandos’ collective will to survive Friday, especially with GodBold limited to 17 minutes because of foul trouble. Notre Dame had Marshall on the ropes several times but let it escape thanks to turnovers and missed free throws.
“I think in the end, it was a testament to our fortitude,” Gaters said. “Our kids didn’t want to lose. Our seniors stepped up very big for us.”
The victory puts Marshall in a state championship game for the first time since 1999, when it won the most recent of its state titles.
“You appreciate it a little more now,” Gaters said of her own feelings. “But these kids have not won a major tournament of any kind.
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“Winning would be great for me, but it would really be special for the kids.”
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