Brooke Newsome and her Brantford Collegiate Mustangs teammates have steadily improved this Brant County senior girls basketball season.
On Tuesday at home that steady improvement at both ends of the court showed, as the young squad handed the Pauline Johnson Collegiate Thunderbirds a 40-18 loss.
"This really brought up our confidence as a team," said Newsome, who finished the game with seven points.
"We were able to work better as a team. We communicated a lot throughout the game and really knew the plays."
She said a great practice Monday set the tone for an important week.
"We really practised hard yesterday and made sure we were ready for this week and the upcoming games," Newsome said. "We've been getting close to a lot of the teams and were gaining confidence from that. But a game like this was great for us. We did a lot of things right."
One of those things was the offence.
"Overall, the communication was way up in the game and, because of that, we played better as a team," she said. "Everyone had their hands up and ready to catch the ball so they could go to the net. That's one of the things we had to improve on and for the most part we did that tonight."
Newsome credits the team's newfound communication to several things.
"I don't know if it's because we match up well against PJ, or because we're at home," she said.
"We knew coming into the last week of the season, we had to give it. I really think we did that in this game."
She also said learning from past defeats has helped.
"We were hoping to prove to everyone what we can do and show the other teams what we can bring to the table for the playoffs next week," Newsome said.
"We've been able to start the games off really well against those teams (Assumption and St. John's), but the intensity goes down once they start racking up the points. So, we just have to keep our heads up and go for it."
Which is what they hope to do Thursday in the regular season finale against the Assumption College Lions.
"We have to pick up the pace," Newsome said. "We were able to get away with not being as fast as we have to in this game. We know we're playing Assumption on Thursday and they're going to be a lot quicker and be on us more. We have to make sure we're really communicating like we did tonight and maybe even louder so we can help each other out."
While the Mustangs are set to go for Thursday's showdown, it was another lesson learned for the T-birds.
"The shots just weren't there tonight," Madeline Dailey said.
"I think we've improved from our first game. I think the first time we played BCI it was rough in the first half and then we picked things up. This time we didn't let them score as much which is a good thing and it shows we are getting better."
Senior
Brantford 40, Pauline Johnson 18
BCI: Rachel Adkins 18, Brooke Newsome 7, Summer Sakaluk 5, Victoria Waud 2, Cara Humeniuk 2, Bayley Vachon 2, Stephanie Johnston 1.
PJC: Ciara Artoski 7, Erica Hewson 4, Brianne Lavallee 3.
Assumption 58, Paris DHS 15
ACS: Alexa Aquino 6, Nicole Shea 8, Naomi Samuel.
Paris: Skylar Wright 5, Kenzie Coombe 4 and Pamela Vellenga 4.
St. John's 49, North Park 25
SJC: Megan Thompson 15, Kendra VanLeeuwen 12.
NPC: Jess Grant 8, Abbey Johnston 7.
Junior
Brantford CI 50, Pauline Johnson 27
BCI: Kaniya Deboer 12, Kiana Madia 10, Katie Cummings 8, Taylor Jones 5, Caitlin Demeyere 4, Amy Edward 2, Sonia Suhota 1.
Assumption 47, Paris 13
North Park 47, St. John's 42
NPC: Brooke Cesar 17, Gabrielle Marton 17, Halle Sitaski 6, Sarah Minutillo 6.
SJC: Jen Garner 16, Leah Coon 12, Bridget Kwasnik 7, Erin Dubois 5.
Retrieved From: http://www.brantfordexpositor.ca/2012/10/23/confident-mustangs-sink-thunderbirds
