‘Burgh turns to young core
LANSINGBURGH, N.Y. » Lansingburgh girls basketball fell last season to Amsterdam in 61- 45 in the Section II quarterfinals.
Lansingburgh coach Darwin Carr said he was impressed by what his team managed to accomplish last season and how they competed in their loss to Amsterdam.
“We got a slow start last season, but I think the last 10 games we started to figure it out,” Carr said. “We started to execute better on offense and defense, made
turnovers and I thought that those last 10 games, we were very successful. The first round game we beat South Glens Falls and then we went on to play Amsterdam. I thought we played Amsterdam really well. I thought they had the size advantage, but I thought we had a pretty good speed advantage. We played them well. We were down eight points with four minutes to go in the game and I felt good about it, but they were so long, they were so big and we didn’t hit some shots down the stretch and they made some big plays and they won.”
Carr said that his team continued to improve as the season continued. Some of those same girls will be back again this season.
“I was extremely excited about our kids during that season because I watched them grow,” Carr said. “Beginning the season, we lost some games. Cohoes beat us up, some teams that beat us early on; we turned around when they came to us and returned the favor. We played Watervliet really well, lost to them by a couple of points, but I was happy to see the kids grow. It is not really howyou start, but I think it is how you finish. I think we finished really well, even losing to Amsterdam I thought it was a really good, successful season.”
This year sees the team have an inexperienced core that only has four returning players and lost seven of their seniors. Lansingburgh loses one of their leaders in Nylasia Sutton to graduation but has more players that haven’t had varsity basketball experience.
Carr said the team is going to have leaders, but will have work to do if they want to win games.
“We are a very young team,” Carr said. “Maddie Teta, who has been on the varsity for three years now, she will be a starter again, she started last year, and she will be starting again this year, probably at the point guard position, so she will be a leader. Patience Riley, who has been on varsity for a couple of years, she will be one of the leaders of the team. We are very young; I will probably start two freshmen on the post, so we are going to be very young. It is not like having Nylasia Sutton. When she was our vocal leader and she was also our quiet leader, running the point guard for the last couple years, now she is gone, in college now, doing pretty well at Herkimer. The kids are going to have to continue to evolve, with Maddie and Patience, and hopefully they can give us that leadership that they so desperately need.”
Carr hopes the team will learn as they go and continue to improve throughout the season.
“I think we will struggle early,” Carr said. “We got young kids, who haven’t played on the varsity level, we lost seven seniors and we are returning only four kids, so I don’t think we are going to start out that fast. How you look at winning is, what is important now and what we are going to do coming into the future. I amnot going to say we are going to win a ton of games. I am not thinking we are going to do that. I think we are going to continue to grow each and every game.
“I think we are going to keep getting better and I think that is what we want them to do. My expectations for the kids is just to come out and play hard every night and have fun and see what happens. In the fourth quarter, with a couple minutes to go, we have to see if the ball bounces our way. It is a tough league, there are a lot of teams that I think are ahead of us in this league. I think we are going to do the best we can with what we have, just keep working hard each and every day and the kids are going to continue to grow.”