Ransom Reaches Milestone In Evanston Loss

Zuri Ransom scored her 1,000th career point for Evanston’s girls basketball team with 6 minutes, 10 seconds left in the second quarter Friday night at the Morton College Christmas Tournament.

The celebration didn’t last much longer than that moment for Wildkit fans.

Evanston endured a nine and one-half minute scoring drought in the second half and lost to Geneva by a 56-43 margin. The Wildkits will take a 9-5 record into Saturday’s 7th place game against Butler Prep of Chicago at 1:45 p.m.

Ransom, a senior guard, became only the third player in ETHS school history to reach the 1,000-point milestone. Tournament officials stopped the game to recognize the achievement after Ransom’s second quarter layup.

But the senior standout suffered through one of her worst shooting nights of this season, connecting on 3-of-13 attempts, and suffered a possible concussion when she was knocked to the floor and hit her head early in the third quarter.

Already bothered by a bad ankle, Ransom did return, but she couldn’t go full tilt and finished with just 7 points. Kailey Starks kept the Kits close with a 25-point outburst, but the losers suffered through numerous empty possessions after a 3-point basket by Starks gave them their last lead of the night at 31-29 with six minutes left on the third quarter clock.

By the time Evanston scored again, the game was out of reach.

“Only nine and a half minutes? It seemed even longer,” said ETHS head coach Brittanny Johnson. “We went 1 on 5 on offense, and that’s not Evanston basketball. Right now we’re not sharing the ball because we’re missing a level of trust in each other. And our lack of effort on defense was really frustrating, too.

“This tournament makes or breaks you --- and we’re broken right now. But now we know what we have to work on, and we have the time to fix things. No disrespect to the teams we’ve played, but the problem is us versus us, Evanston versus Evanston. We’re just not doing the job. We’re not giving ourselves a chance to be competitive.”

Mixing and matching zone defenses with their man-to-man staple hasn’t produced much in the way of results at the tournament. Evanston’s inexperienced defenders haven’t shown the ability to close out on enemy 3-point shooters this week, as Peoria Notre Dame (11 3-point baskets) and Geneva (10) constantly converted wide-open looks at the basket from long range in back to back tourney contests.

The Kits trailed by 10 points early in the second quarter when Ransom briefly mishandled a ball on the left side of the lane, regained control and then drove for the 1,000th point of her career. Then it was Starks who took over, relentlessly pounding the boards (she finished with 7 rebounds) and pouring in 12 points in the period to pull the Kits within 27-26 at halftime.

Geneva junior Leah Palmer led all scorers with 26 points. The Vikings pulled away in the fourth quarter by sinking 6-of-8 field goal attempts, including all three of their 3-point tries.

“We have to figure some things out,” Johnson said. “We get up 4-0 or 5-0 in games and we don’t do a good job of maintaining that. We lose our focus even after a good start. It’s pretty frustrating. We’re not where we want to be, but we still have time to fix it.”

Ransom, a Ball State recruit, has totaled 1,002 points and now trails only Leighah Amori-Wool (1,268) and Kayla Henning (1,102) on the all-time school scoring list.

“1,000 points says a lot about just how good Zuri is,” praised the coach. “She only got to play 9 games during the COVID year, and she’s missed some games with injuries, so she’s about 20 games behind the others on that list. There’s a reason other teams key in on her. She’s a great shooter, and she really reads the game well.

“Based on her freshmen and sophomore years, when she didn’t get to play that many games, I wouldn’t have thought this was attainable. She’s such a great teammate and we’re all so happy for her.”

“I had no clue I was close to 1,000 points,” Ransom said. “I wasn’t even thinking about it at the beginning of the season. But lately people have been asking me randomly if I was going to get it anytime soon, so in my head I knew I must be close.

“It was definitely exciting seeing all of the support I had in the stands, and all the signs, when they stopped the game. I really didn’t know what was up. I’ve grown up super humble and don’t see myself as one of the best ever in the program. I’m just doing my thing and playing ball.

“It would be exciting to pass up the other girls on the list, but that won’t be on my mind. I’ll just try to keep playing my game.”