By Brennan Stebbins (For OzarksSportsZone.com)
After winning 68 games over the past three years along with a trio of district championships, the Aurora girls basketball team will have a new face on the bench this winter.
The new head coach is DJ Gutscher who steps in for Jason Cole, but Gutscher is no stranger to the program––he spent five seasons as Aurora’s head coach before moving into administration three years ago, paving the way for Cole.
“I’m extremely excited, it’s a great group of girls. They have high goals and expectations for this season so it’s going to be fun to be a part of that,” Gutscher said. “I would say it’s going to be an easy transition because I’m familiar with a lot of them after working with them when they were younger. When I left the program to slide into administration, a lot of these girls were in junior high, so I’ve been around them in the summers. It’s going to be fun and exciting to be around them as they’ve matured and developed and gotten better. I think it’s going to be a fun season.”
The Lady Houns went 23-6 last year and lost to Logan-Rogersville in the sectional round. That Aurora squad outscored opponents 51-33 on average while averaging a dozen steals per game, and totaled 188 3-pointers for the season while allowing just 23. The Houns were a quarterfinal team in 2023-24 and lost in the sectionals the year before that.
This winter Aurora will have to replace three all-conference performers in Kylee Cole, Makena Hall and Alyssa Burch. Cole was the Big 8 Player of the Year and a Class 4 All-State selection, while Hall was a unanimous first teamer in the Big 8 and was named to the conference’s all-defensive team. Burch earned honorable mention Big 8 honors. Additionally, Cole (district POY), Jaelyn Ernest and Hall were named to the Class 4 District 12 team.
“I was able to start working with them that first week of June and there will be a lot of similarities but we’re also going to play to our strengths, and this group is going to have different strengths than what our program has had in recent years,” Gutscher said. “We’ll have a little bit more length and size than what we’ve had in the past so that will look a little different. I feel like we’ll have some versatility with some of our players. We’re still evolving on what that’s going to look like, especially on the offensive side of the floor. It’s going to look different, probably a little bit more methodical, but I do think there’s some potential there to produce numbers. We’ll have to see how the process works for us and how we develop and as we start defining roles. We have a few different kids that could step up on any given night and be a leading scorer for us.”
This season the team’s top returners are seniors Brooke Blevins and Jaysa Ernest. Both got varsity action in every game last season, with Blevins contributing 2.5 points, 3 rebounds and 1.5 steals on average and Ernest adding 2 points, a steal and 1.5 assists. Other returners with some varsity experience are juniors Kylee Phelps and Miley Ferigna.
“We’ve got four kids with some decent experience coming back, none of them with starting experience but they do have some quality varsity minutes,” Gutscher said. “I would say one of the biggest strengths that’s going to help us is every day in practice they were competing against that group from last year. They know how to compete, they know how to work hard because they were having a lot of quality practices against a quality group. That will help us with the transition and getting everybody used to the varsity level. I think really it’s going to be more about us being able to come together as a group and get that experience together on the varsity floor. Once we get comfortable as a group I think that’s when we’ll start taking off.”
Newcomers include senior Lakynn Robinson who didn’t play last season but will see some quality minutes, junior Lyla Cutbirth, sophomore Lyla Seitz, and freshman Taianna Yandall. Gutscher said all of them will be competing for minutes and should see the floor quite a bit.
Roster versatility will be another strength for the Lady Houns.
“I’ve got Blevins who kind of runs the point, but we may look to get her to the wing some this year and put her in more scoring positions,” Gutscher said. “It really depends on matchups. We do have a couple of taller, lengthier kids who depending on who’s on them we may try to put them on the perimeter a little bit because I think they can handle it.”
Aurora will jamboree at Webb City on Nov. 18 and open the regular season in the Chadwick Flyer Invitational and the Blue Eye Invitational. The Lady Houns host Mountain Grove Dec. 11 in their first home game, and are also slated for the Pink & White Tournament in December and the NEO Tournament in January.
