For the past four years, Danielle Tristani, Kaysi McLaughlin and Kelly Shober carried the Marian girls basketball team.
In fact, last season, the trio carried the Fillies (22-7) deep into the playoffs, where they fell one game short of a State Championship game appearance.
With his three-headed monster of the past few years now slain due to graduation, Marian head coach Paul Brutto is tasked with concocting a new winning formula for a program that has qualified for the District 11 playoffs in 39 straight seasons.
"We lose all our size and most of our points," stated Brutto. "Danielle was a four-year starter, and Kelly and Kaysi started for three-and-a-half years. All three of them were also double-digit scorers, so that's a lot to replace."
The trio combined for 63-percent of last year's scoring, with McLaughlin averaging 11.28 points per game and 57 three-pointers, both tops on the team. Meanwhile, Shober (a 5-9 forward) averaged 10.89 points per game and Tristani (a 5-10 forward) netted 9.96 points per game. Shober and Tristani were also the team's top two rebounders.
"We're very much a guard-oriented team this year and we're trying to change our style to some degree to reflect our lack of heighth," said Brutto. "I think you'll see us being more of a full court team both offensively and defensively and playing at a higher tempo than we have over the past couple of years."
Two pieces that are going to be instrumental in that transition are 5-4 junior point guard Gabby Green and 5-4 senior forward Samantha Faust.
Green and Faust started all 29 games for Marian last season and combined to score 25-percent of the team's points. Green