Taking on a pre-med workload next fall at IUPUI, Celina McElroy won’t have time for basketball anymore.
This postseason marks the end of the road for the Indian Creek senior, and she’s hoping to make the most of it.
“I just want to be able to end my senior year and high school basketball knowing that I did everything I could to win,” McElroy said.
The Braves received a first-round bye in the Class 3A Indianapolis Manual Sectional and will play a Friday semifinal against either the host team or eighth-ranked Danville.
McElroy is playing her best basketball going into the tournament. Having missed her entire junior season with a knee injury, it took her a little time to find her groove this winter, but judging from her 23-point, seven-rebound performance in a Western Indiana Conference playoff rout of Northview, she’s found it.
“That should worry some of the teams in our sectional now, because she’s back 100 percent. You know what she can do; come and stop her,” Indian Creek coach Brian Ferris said.
“If she plays like she did (against Northview), she’s going to be hard to handle.”
Getting to that point was a frustrating process at times for the 5-foot-10 McElroy, who says that watching games from the bench last year was a double-edged sword. On the one hand, she was able to see the action from a coach’s perspective and gain a greater understanding of what they look for. On the flip side, that caused her to start overthinking things and play more tentatively when she first came back.
“I think that really affected me at the beginning of the season,” she said.
McElroy got away from that eventually, realizing that she needed to let it all hang out during her final season, and it’s showing on the court. She’s hitting her peak at the perfect time, and the Braves are hoping that translates into a long tournament run.
“(Northview) was the boost that I needed, the team needed, just to have that confidence,” McElroy said.
