Despite Kennedy Herndon ’23 and Kiley Buckey ’23 adding a combined 48 points to the scoreboard in Wednesday’s game against Brewster Academy, Girls Basketball lost 63-51. Its record now stands at 3-5.
According to Leila Boech-Powers ’24, the team played well both offensively and defensively in the game, especially since there were only three substitutes and it was its first game after returning from break.
“I think that both the offense and defense in the game were quite good, considering that we have been on break for 2 weeks with minimal practice times. Both definitely improved in the second half, but I would say since Brewster Academy was a strong transition points team, the team did a great job keeping up with them and moving our feet,” Boech-Powers wrote in an email to The Phillipian.
While Elise Minor ’24 could not participate in the game, she believed that Andover had the ability to win the game, yet fell short because of multiple positive Covid-19 tests among players.
Minor said, “Offensively, we were definitely slow. Defensively, we started out stronger than we thought. That gave us a pretty strong start. We weren’t as behind as we thought we were going to be knowing that we lacked a lot of players due to Covid. I know that three of our starters were out, I was out, we had a girl injured, so we didn’t have a lot of girls coming off the bench. It was a lot of subbing in and out. Basically, we all came up from a pretty long break, we did slower than we were hoping to. Our heads weren’t really in it, so we really don’t want that to happen next game. I’m pretty sure we can take on a team like this with our individual skill level. We definitely just got to keep working.”
According to Ava Davey ’25, Andover’s defense played cohesively in the second half of the game, but consistency on defense will be a major focus going forward.
Davey said, “I think our team worked hard this game. Our defense was really good. We held up pretty well, we had 8 players. So, I think that we tried really hard and we worked as a team. We also haven’t played as a team in three weeks… I think our transitional defense got better as the game went on and our passing was really good. By the end of the game, our communication on defense was really good… [Though] our communication on defense was good at the end of the game, just keeping that energy throughout the game is what we should work on.”
Boech-Powers added that while injuries and limited players held the team back, they also allowed other players to step up and play for longer intervals.
Boech-Powers added, “In this game, although I think overall, we did well on offense, I think we need to improve on our fast shooting. I think the team did really well this game at hustling up and down the court. Due to injuries and other health reasons, we only had eight players, meaning only three subs. So even though most of the players stayed in for long intervals at a time, they kept going and played hard.”
According to Minor, the team should focus more on its offensive play in the next coming practices.
Minor said, “In these next practices, we definitely need to go over [the] offense and need to work on staying focused and in shape. For the next few practices, we want to work on our offense more. Individually, we could go to the gym. Especially since I can’t play till Saturday and Covid is still going around. We just need everyone to be an offensive threat.”
Andover Girls Basketball will face Governor’s Academy on Friday at home.
