When the Dike-New Hartford girls basketball team resumes its season, they’ll look to make the most of a 2024 portion of the schedule where they got in sync with a new-look team.
“We do have a young roster, not just in terms of grade, but also just experience,” Head Coach Matt Dove says. “So that’s always exciting and challenging in itself. And I think the one thing that I’ve been very pleased with and our assistant coaches have been too, is just the approach that these girls take to practice. We got thumped pretty good over in Parkersburg the other night, but I never got the sense like the girls were feeling sorry for themselves or anything. They put their heads down and they wanted to come back and go to work the next day and learn from that. So that’s kind of been my take on just how we have approached this season, is we knew that it’s going to be a process of learning and trying to improve, and focusing on that every day.”
At 3-4 and 1-3 in the NICL-Central, the Wolverines have worked three new starters into the lineup, with a bench rotation of juniors and seniors who played minimal varsity minutes before this season. Payton Foster leads with 13.0 points per game and Izzy Norton adds 11.3. Madde Buskohl has led in rebounds with 6.1 per game.
Dove on the areas of improvement he hopes the team is able to make in 2025.
“To see a little bit more consistency on offense, not just from the shooting perspective, but just consistency in our overall offensive execution. I think on the defensive end, we still have a lot of room to improve. We’ve played a few different defensive looks this year, so that can always be challenging. So just continuing to kind of sharpen some of those areas and then just come to practice every day with the attitude that we’re trying to learn. We’re trying to gain experience and get better. And that’s all of us. So I think if we can keep that focus in mind, I think we will continue to improve. I’ll be very interested to see where this team can go after Christmas.”
The Wolverines will resume the season Friday at AGWSR.
