Monday, February 10, 2025
With Uniondale girls’ basketball not operating at full strength, head coach Nolan Dunkley thinks the Knights are doing the best they can, and are due for a positive change soon.
The team was recently dealt a loss at the hands of conference frontrunner Syosset last Friday, 62-32.
“Their ball movement, they got a well-oiled machine over there in Syosset,” Dunkley credited. “[My team] knows that they can play better with people being there, because it’s gonna be fatigue, conditioning and people playing out of position, so it’s going to be a myriad of why we’re in that situation.”
People playing in positions they’re not used to is probably the toughest challenge the Knights (and coaching staff) have had to deal with.
“The only thing I can see is if everything does come back and align, people are going to find appreciation for other people’s positions because they’ve had to play them and they might know what they need,” Dunkley said. “We had our four go in to play point guard, who’s never played point guard ever.”
The forward-turned-guard is junior Kayla Reid, and she’s certainly not the only player to have had to switch around.
“I’ve had my five, because I ended up switching all of my bigs to bring the ball up because they were just tall to break the press they put us in,” Dunkley said. “So I had Shy’Ann [Talmadge] at the front of our press to break it.”
A handful of his players were out of the lineup for a few days at a time, between injuries and an All-County music festival. Most of them are trickling back, and Dunkley has a renewed sense of hope.
Uniondale (4-6 overall) just welcomed back last season’s leading scorer, junior Zahara Saintyl, from an injury.
There’s that, and the fact that the team is at an even 3-3 in conference after a tougher non-conference schedule that Dunkley drafted up to prep the team.
“I did build up a strong non-league schedule to get us where we should be because we have the pieces to be a championship team, or make a deep run in the playoffs,” he said. “With all these hiccups we’re going through, we’re still at .500 in conference to be on the bright side. Now if we get everybody back and back into their roles and get that time to gel which we have from Regents Week where we have no games, this is the perfect time to get back healthy, go over offenses and plays, get everybody acclimated.”
There’s a lot of moving parts, but Dunkley is excited to see it through. There’s Freeport transfer, Soniya Coleman, who was thrown into the deep end without a life jacket, and found a way to contribute in her first game against Oceanside (39-37 win Jan. 14) with two steals and two assists. Talmadge had 19 points and 12 rebounds in that victory.
The Knights visit Farmingdale this Saturday for a noon tipoff.
NOT ON ROSTER YOU SENT AND NEWSDAY LINK DOESNT WORK. PLS CHECK
