Following an 18-9 season, a Freedom Division title and a playoff appearance, the Pirates girl’s basketball team will begin its 2015-2016 campaign Friday night at Riverside looking to defend their divisional crown.
The Pirates got off to a slow start last year, going 1-4 in their first five games before reeling off multiple win streaks of five or more games to get to 18 victories.
“More consistency, especially in the beginning of the year,” head coach Bret Jenkins said. “Last year we started really slow, 1-4. We came out of the gates slow and it put us behind the eight ball in terms of power points, playoff seeding and even in the division. We definitely want to start off a lot better than we did last year. That will help us as we go throughout the season.”
Their 18 wins secured them the 9-seed in the Central, Group 2 Tournament and a first-round game with Matawan. The result was a five point loss, 43-38, but it didn’t diminish the success the program had on the court.
“I really liked last year not having the target on our back because we were not supposed to be very good and we started 1-4. I think that’s what everyone was expecting to happen to us all year,” Jenkins said.
“It was nice sneaking up on some teams. It’s also nice to know that we should be pretty good this year, we should win some games, and have some teams looking ahead at us and thinking about having to play Cinnaminson.”
With six seniors on this year’s squad Jenkins and the staff will have plenty of help when it comes to leadership on and off the court and team bonding.
“The best part about our seniors is we have different range,” Jenkins said. “We have seniors who won’t come off the floor to seniors who will be bench players, but leaders for our team in practice and in the locker room.”
“The girls in our program look up to the seniors for leadership on the court and off the court. All six of them have a wide range of different personalities and wide range of roles on our team and that’s going to make it very important.”
Outside of the normal rivalry games with Holy Cross and Delran, Jenkins named three other schools the team looks forward to playing each year.
“R.V., because they are the top of the class in the BCSL,” Jenkins said. “When we play them each year it is a good indicator to see where we stack up. Just to see if we can hang with them. It shows what kind of team we are and where we’re at. Northern Burlington we’ve had some really good battles with the last few years and Moorestown.”
Since camp opened, the coaching staff has been focusing on getting in shape in order to follow the team motto of “All 32.”
“We press pretty much the entire game. We need to make sure we are in shape because our motto is ‘All 32.’ We’re going to press all 32 minutes and use our athleticism,” Jenkins said. “Pretty much everyone on the team plays soccer and we’re going to use that to our advantage.”
“A lot of these girls came in in great shape. It was great, even the first practice, seeing them being able to handle everything. There is difficulty when it comes to skill and ball handling because a lot of them haven’t picked up a ball since summertime. So, it takes a few weeks to get them going in terms of actual skill and basketball playing.”
The athleticism and depth of the team will be its strengths this year.
“Last year, we expanded how many girls we played because of the style of play we play,” Jenkins said. “We went to 9, sometimes even 10 per game. Very few teams do that now.”
“That’s the goal to do that this year as well. How well in shape we are from soccer, cross country and field hockey; how tough we made this pre-season and the fact that we play 9 or 10 per game, I think that’s going to benefit us in wearing teams down late in games.”
Girl’s basketball opens their 2015-2016 season on Friday night at Riverside with a 6:15 tip-off.
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