BOURBON — Last season, Triton’s girls basketball team struggled to put the ball in the hoop at times. Fortunately for the Lady Trojans, they played good enough defense to win eight games and to keep themselves in many of those other contests.

A more experienced lineup and a better mix of weapons have head coach Adam Heckaman confident his team will be able to score the ball a little better this season, but the priority isn’t going to change — the Trojans are still emphasizing defense.

“Every year it’s a priority for us to hold teams down,” said Heckaman. “We struggled to shoot the ball last year, but our defensive average was very good. That is going to be a focus of ours is hold a lot of teams down defensively. Because even if we’re scoring better — which I think we can score better this year — if we’re scoring more consistently and putting up a few more points, there are still going to be those off nights where we’re not shooting well or we’re not getting the ball where it needs to go or it’s just not going in. That’s one thing that we really focus on a lot is the fact that we can always control what we’re doing defensively with effort and rotations and things like that, but sometimes the shots just don’t fall offensively.”

Returning to the lineup this year are a core of three returning starters and four total players with significant varsity minutes from last year’s 8-15 campaign. Two-time Hoosier North Athletic Conference Player of the Year Hannah Wanemacher is back for her senior season, as are classmates Nicole Sechrist and Charlotte Morris. Whytnie Miller returns for her sophomore season in the backcourt after starting much of 2016-17 as a freshman.

“They logged a lot of varsity minutes last year so I’m very comfortable with those kids being ready to go and being able to play multiple positions and doing a lot of different things for us,” Heckaman said of the quartet. “I think all four of them are going to be good leaders for our younger kids that are coming up from JV or maybe even possibly some freshmen. Those kids will be leaders for the rest of them, helping them get into the right spots, helping them to learn quickly with what we’re doing.”

Adding some varsity experience to this year’s team are frontcourter Abigail Powell and fellow junior Delanie Groves at the guard position. Chelsea Johnson will give the Trojans more size inside alongside Powell, Morris and Sechrist, while Lexia Hostrawser, Alyxia Viers and incoming freshman Jaela Faulkner are expected to split their minutes between the Trojans varsity and JV squads.

Gone from last year’s lineup are Courtney Jennings and Quinn Downing, and Downing’s absence at the point leaves the team with a notable vacancy up top. While Miller was the go-to 1 guard when Downing was off the floor last year, Heckaman is planning to get a little creative with his personnel this year.

At 5’9”, Sechrist doesn’t seem like the obvious candidate to play the point, but with size to spare on this year’s team, Heckaman says he plans to use her there, depending on the particular lineup on the floor.

“Whytnie played point guard a lot for us last year when Quinn wasn’t in the game, and she will some still this year but we’re going to try some different things with Nikki running point guard. Whytnie will take that role sometimes, and just depending we may have some younger kids that have to step up into that role as well,” the 10th year Triton skipper explained.

“We tried some things this summer with having Nikki run point guard, and we like some things we saw there. We have a lot of size returning in the post with Charlotte down there, and we have a junior in Chelsie Johnson — she played JV for us last year but I think she’ll give us a lot of really good minutes on the varsity this year.”

Offensively, Wanemacher will remain the focal point of Triton’s offense after averaging 13.3 points per game as the Trojans’ leading scorer last season, nearly as many as the next three returning players — Sechrist, Miller and Morris — combined. The team put up just 36.8 points per game in ’16-17 while surrendering a little over 37 a night on defense. The Trojans’ defensive average over their eight wins was 22.62 points, and while Heckaman will continue to stress effort on the defensive end, he’s confident his players will be able to increase their offensive output this year. A versatile roster with a number of multi-threat players and a good mix of size and guard play among his personnel should allow him some flexibility on the offensive end.

“I think we can do a lot of different things with the lineups that we put on the floor,” he said. “We have a lot of experience returning, both in the post and the perimeter. We have size that we should be able to use this year down in the paint and to give us some longer lineups, some bigger lineups. We can rotate some of those post players out on the perimeter, and I think that we can even go with some smaller lineups with just one post player.

“I’m excited with being able to toy with different lineups and different rotations and see what works best for us, having different options against different types of teams that we might play.”

Triton’s defense may serve another purpose this season too — namely, helping cue up some offense off opponents’ turnovers.

“One of our main focuses will be defense and making sure we’re holding teams down, but we’re really going to try to focus on pushing the tempo a little bit and trying to get into our offense a little bit earlier to try to score some easier points, just to help our offense flow a little bit,” said Heckaman. “We’re going to look to push the tempo a little bit more than we have in the past couple years, but defense is going to be our big focal point to make sure that we’re holding some of those teams down so that on any given night we have a chance to win.”