The Dike-New Hartford basketball teams will travel to West Fork for a non-conference doubleheader Thursday.
The Wolverine girls (4-7) will go for their second straight win after defeating Union 44-37 Tuesday, which snapped a season-long five-game losing streak. West Fork (9-2) has won four straight, dating to their first game of January. However, they’ll look to regain their offensive form after shooting just 24 percent in Friday’s 46-31 win over Nashua-Plainfield.
The West Fork boys (4-6) got back on track with Monday’s 61-55 win over Clarion-Goldfield-Dows, which snapped a four-game losing streak. Head Coach Abe Maske on bouncing back.
“We’ve been spending a lot of time with different types of game shots that that aren’t necessarily outside the arc,” Maske says. “We’ve focused really hard on trying to improve on our defensive physicality and intensity. I think we’ve done a pretty good job for the most part getting there, but then something had to give. And I think a little bit, it was the amount of time we’re spending shooting the basketball where we’ve dedicated much more to shooting. We’re spending more time. So it’s kind of a two-step process. Number one, it’s getting reps and game speed reps. But then the second thing in games is making sure that we’re taking the shots that are good quality shots.”
Dike-New Hartford (5-6) will look to bounce back from Tuesday’s 75-54 loss at Union, where they were unable to recover from a slow start. Head Coach Alex Tagtow says the return from injury by seniors Carson Costello and Jack Hoehns will help take the team to the next level.
“Those two seniors back, that’s huge for us depth-wise,” Tagtow says. “Hopefully we can build in some more break for some of our heavy minutes guys as we’re playing and you kind of work it out that way. But we’re kind of feeling it out how those guys are going to impact the rotation. I don’t plan on removing guys from the rotation. So how that shakes out and how the minutes kind of settle out, having five games in a week in a seven day period, there’s really no better way to figure it out than to do it.”
The doubleheader will start at 6:15 p.m.
