Girls Basketball: Lady Trojans return solid lineup

The close of last season was not a whole lot of fun for the Troy High School girls basketball team. A close 38-37 loss to Plains in a district tournament “play-in” game was the end of a 7-12 campaign.

Lady Trojans head coach Neil Newton is focusing on the postseason tournament as he enters his first year at the helm.

“The real season doesn’t start until the tournament so it’s always good to have 18 games to see what you need to work on,” Newton said. “I can’t wait until Friday.”

The Lady Trojans will take the floor for the first time at the new Troy Activity Center on Friday in their own preseason tournament. Troy will face Valley Christian at 6 p.m., and then take on Stillwater Christian on Saturday at 6 p.m.

“We have a lot of varsity experience coming back,” Newton said of the squad. “They’re young – we only have a couple of seniors on the team – but we have a good core of juniors and promising freshmen coming up.”

Ali Maestas, Jackie Pepiot, Alyssa Olds and Cassidy Hand all saw starts on last year’s team and give the Lady Trojans a solid returning lineup. The team’s top scorer a year ago, Molly Harpole, along with Alicia Anderson, have graduated.

Nastassja Hines and Kimmy Klin are also in the mix for considerable playing time on the varsity.

“Ali will bring good leadership. She’s a senior and she played in Europe this summer and spent some time playing,” Newton said. “She has good instincts.”

Hand has been working on her shot.

“Cassidy is a good ball handler with a good shot,” Newton said. “She developed a 3-point shot here this last year and hopefully we’ll be able to use that a bit.”

Pepiot and Olds will work inside.

“Jackie and Alyssa are our post players … they’re not the biggest but I bet they’re among the smartest,” Newton said. “They have great post moves and are good at finding the openings.”

The addition of Bigfork is expected to increase the level of competition in the 7-B district. Bigfork, Eureka and Mission are among the teams that Newton sees fighting for the top.

“My goal by the end of the year is to push the ball up the floor,” Newton said. “We’ve got to work on ball handling first, dribbling and looking down the floor. We’re working hard on that in practice. Right now, we’re just trying to get in some offenses and we’re focusing on defense.”

Newton said he has 21 girls out for the program but most are young with varying degrees of experience.

“We’re pretty short on varsity-level players,” Newton said. “We have some freshmen that will come in and play some varsity for us this year down the road.”

After the tournament games this week, the Lady Trojans will head to Thompson Falls on Dec. 17 for their conference opener and the first of three straight road games. The Troy girls will not play at home again until Jan. 2 against Noxon.