Benet's Doyle can do it all
Her offensive game is pretty impressive, especially of late. But what really gets Benet's Kathleen Doyle fired up is "D-ing" up an opponent.
The Redwings junior point guard loves to play in-your-face defense, and her speed and tenacity allow her to wreak havoc on opposing teams. With Doyle leading the way Benet took a 32-3 record into Friday's Class 4A semifinal at Redbird Arena in Normal, the most wins ever by a boys or girls basketball team at the Lisle school.
"I think getting into people defensively is really fun," said Doyle, a three-year starter who has drawn attention from many of the top Division I programs in the country. "Our team wants to make other people's lives miserable while they're dribbling the ball. It's always good when that works out for us."
First-year Redwings coach Joe Kilbride has watched his point guard turn into an all-around threat on the court this season, a player who can score inside and outside and who piles up assists for a team averaging close to 69 points a game.
It's that combination of athletic ability and basketball prowess that make Doyle the Daily Herald's girls basketball All-Area Captain for 2014-15.
Defense first
But Kilbride knows Doyle is especially passionate about defense, and he knows she excels on that part of the game as well as anyone.
"I think she's one of the best defenders in the state. Her quickness and her tenacity are almost unparalleled," Kilbride said. "She plays every possession hard. Really she is the key to initiating our entire press defense. What we've been able to do in terms of full-court pressure, Kathleen is at the point of that."
It's no surprise she leads the team with 172 assists and that she entered the supersectional against unbeaten Edwardsville one theft shy of a team-leading 100 steals, but the 5-foot-9 Doyle also blocks shots and comes down with plenty of rebounds, using the hops that made her a strong volleyball player prior to shifting her focus solely to basketball two years ago.
"She's such a talented kid and has such a wide array of skills," Kilbride said. "She leads us in assists and steals, she's second in blocks and rebounds. There's games where she's our leading scorer. She's averaging 13 points, 5 rebounds, 5 assists, 3 steals and one and half blocks a game."
While Doyle and her teammates love to pressure opponents into turnovers - Bolingbrook was done in by too many giveaways in last week's sectional semifinal - the point guard has turned into a big-time offensive threat, driving fiercely to the basket, hitting 3-pointers and also using her speed to get herself open for pull-up midrange jumpers that are finding the bottom the net more frequently.
In a regional championship game with the Huskies, Doyle equaled a personal high with 25 points, and then torched Bolingbrook for 20 points at the Oswego East sectional.
"Doyle's tough. Caleigh Corbett is a pretty good defender and that was tough for her to defend," Naperville North coach Jason Dycus said after Doyle helped end his team's season for a second straight year. "Doyle is a load. I wish she was a senior. She's always under control."
That's another thing that makes her special. Doyle is shining on both offense and defense, but she also runs the Redwings offense superbly, making sure Benet has a big edge in the turnover department and also making sure the offense is taking advantage of all of its weapons. Seniors Emily Eshoo and Emily Schramek have each surpassed the 1,000-point mark in scoring and each will play college ball next year. Add guard Elise Stout and center Katherine Jaseckas into the mix, and the Redwings have plenty of ways to beat you.
At the point
But it's up to Doyle to run the show, and she seems to know just when to get the ball to who or when to take the shots herself. After her back-to-back 20-or-more point games in the playoffs, she tallied just 8 in the sectional championship win over Oswego. But she still had as big an impact as anyone, recording 10 assists and 8 rebounds in the win.
"Offensively, she has gotten better as the season's gone on. But Kathleen is really good about just sort of feeling the game and giving us what we need," Kilbride said. "So when the two Emilys have had it going, Kathleen has been really good about just facilitating and leading the defense and leading the fastbreak. But then we've had some other games where maybe a couple of the kids have struggled and Kathleen has stepped up like in the regional championship against Naperville North.
"So she's kind of just picking and choosing almost … what do we need and she tries and provides what it is we need at any given point."
Against Oswego the Redwings didn't need a ton of points from her, yet Doyle helped lead the team to one of its best games so far in this record-breaking campaign.
"She's one of the rare kids who is able to dominate a game without scoring a lot of points. She's able to do it because she's such a good defender, she gets you rebounds, she's making assists, she gets blocks and steals. She's doing a little bit of everything; often guards the other team's best player, their best handler, and lead our fastbreak for us. It's a rare thing when you can dominate a game without scoring 20 or 25 points and she's able to do that."
Desire and physical gifts play a big role, but Doyle has worked hard to build her game, focusing on ballhandling skills from a young age. The LaGrange Park resident is the youngest of six siblings to attend Benet, and the sports family includes a sister, Sheila, who plays volleyball at North Carolina and brother, Mick, who played baseball at Notre Dame.
"I can't tell you my exact age, but ever since I can remember I was in sports," Doyle said. "I'm the youngest of six kids, so I was always playing against my brothers and sisters, so that was fun."
When asked how she got so good at keeping possession of the basketball, she replied: "Just growing up, all the basketball teams I was on worked really hard on that. Especially in grade school we always did ballhandling … still to this day we do ballhandling at practice."
The work has surely paid off. This Redwings team, the third in school history to go at least as far as the final eight, will go down as one of the school's best, and afterward Doyle can think a little more about where she wants to play in college.
Kilbride said Doyle has offers from many of the top women's basketball programs from across the country as well as Ivy League schools since she also excels in the classroom. No surprise there as Doyle seems to be good at pretty much everything she sets her sights on.