Des Moines Roosevelt girls basketball kicks off 2024 with win over Hoover
Des Moines Roosevelt girls basketball finished 2023 on a two-game losing streak, dropping matchups against Ames and Ottumwa before the winter break.
But the Roughriders bounced back against Des Moines Hoover on Friday, pulling off a 55-23 win to snap the losing streak and improve to 5-4 on the season. Roosevelt sits above .500 through nine games, which didn’t seem like a possibility two weeks before the start of the season.
That is when current head coach Ronnie Lewis took over. In the last year, Roosevelt cycled through three other coaches before Lewis stepped into the role. The Roughriders are still in an adjustment period, but Lewis knows his team is in a good spot, all things considered.
“I try not to make excuses,” Lewis told the Register postgame. “We are a talented group. I know that it’s just going to be about putting all those pieces together. As we develop, they learn my system and I learn how they play, I think the sky’s the limit for us.”
The Roughriders looked the part of a young and rusty, but competitive, team against Hoover.
Roosevelt climbed to a 27-10 lead in the first half. The Roughriders relied heavily on Hoover’s mistakes and capitalized on most turnovers – either forced or just off some sloppy passes from the Huskies.
Kenna Ledinsky carried the weight for Roosevelt. She scored 17 points in the first half, with more of her scores coming from the paint after she picked up a Hoover turnover. She finished with a game-leading 24 points, and she didn’t play the entire fourth quarter.
“She plays really, really well,” Lewis said. “Obviously, she’s a great offensive player. We’re working on the defense. One play, she gets the steal, runs and grabs the ball before it goes out of bounds, finishes the layup. It’s probably the best combination of plays from offense to defense I think I’ve seen her have all year.”
The Huskies continued to struggle on Friday. Hoover, which entered Friday's game at 0-9, dropped its tenth matchup of the season. Only one player scored more than one basket in the first half: Brooklynn Royster, off the bench.
It was more of the same in the second half. Roosevelt scored 14 unanswered points and held Hoover scoreless for over the first four minutes after the break. Alayna Jarrett, the Huskies' leading scorer, managed only eight points.
But it wasn’t all bad on Hoover’s end of the court. Victoria Ugwuanyi recorded a trio of basket-preventing blocks. Jarrett made a pair of 3-pointers look easy, and Takira Smith brought hustle off the bench.
Roosevelt will turn around to face Waukee, one of the top-ranked girls teams in the state, on Saturday.
Alyssa Hertel is the college sports recruiting reporter for the Des Moines Register. Contact Alyssa at ahertel@dmreg.com or on Twitter @AlyssaHertel.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Des Moines Roosevelt girls basketball starts 2024 with win over Hoover
