LINWOOD – The Mustang girls basketball team reeled off seven straight wins to start the season and came within inches of knocking off top-10 team Manasquan Saturday.
The Mainland Regional High School girls were 7-0 heading into the contest against 7-1 Manasquan at the Seagull Classic at Holy Spirit High School.
Mainland has been the team that has jumped out to early leads in its games this season, but Manasquan had the faster start Saturday morning, taking a 12-5 lead after the first quarter. The Mustangs responded in a big way in the second quarter, outscoring their opponents 21-10 to take a 26-22 lead into the halftime break.
With Camryn Dirkes leading the way with 17 points and teammate Kaitlyn Boggs adding 12 more and 7 rebounds, the two teams played even in the third quarter, scoring 13 each.
It was the final quarter when Manasquan was able to retake the lead with a 16-10 edge in scoring for the 51-49 win.
Brooke Hollawell and Mary Elizabeth Donnelly paced Manasquan with 15 and 10 points, respectively.
The Mustangs now have one loss, but are 4-0 in the American Conference of the Cape-Atlantic League along with Atlantic City.
Before falling to Manasquan in that tight game, the Mustang girls beat Millville 68-28, then Ocean City 56-30 and followed that with a 51-13 win over Atlantic Tech. During the holiday break tournament, the girls beat Neptune 71-48, followed it with a narrow win over Lenape, 57-49, then capped it with a 58-22 win over Jackson Memorial before facing Absegami (2-4).
Even though she sat for more than half of the Absegami game, Dirkes led the Mustangs with 11 points, followed by Boggs and Bella Mazur with 10 each, Sydney Stokes and McKenna Pontari with 8 each, Kasey Bretones and Madison Naman with 6 each and Ava Mazur and A. Sheeran with 2 apiece.
With intense full-court pressure in the first half, the Mainland girls held the Braves to 4 points in the first quarter and 6 points in the second while scoring 39 points. There was a 16-9 margin in the third quarter and in the fourth, with coach Scott Betson giving many of his non-starters time on the court, Absegami gained a tiny bit of ground by outscoring the Mustangs 11-8 for the 63-30 final.
After the Absegami game, Boggs said the chemistry has been important to the team’s success so far this season.
“It’s all the time we spend together. In practice we’re helping each other up. Everyone is encouraging to everyone with everything we do,” she said. “We’ve all played together for a very long time. Obviously we have two sisters on the team (twins Bella and Ava Mazur) and they’ve been playing with Kasey (Bretones) for years and I’ve been playing with Cam (Dirkes) since like third grade. We’ve all been in the same area playing together and we all have had a lot of time to get to know each other. That’s helped us a lot. Everyone is just so friendly.
“It’s not the type of team you hear about where there is a lot of drama. We’re so friendly to each other and it really feels good to be on the same team,” Boggs said. “It feels good to have each other’s backs. It’s like you have 10 other sisters who always back you up.”
Betson said his team plays aggressively right out of the gate.
“We talk every game, no matter what our scouting tells us, the biggest thing, our strength, is to push tempo,” he said. “We want to get up and down (the court) and playing defensively is what starts that. Obviously there will be times when we back off and try to play more packed in, based off of personnel, but we want to generate that type of energy that gets us going to the basket.
“Girl for girl out here, they can all run the floor really well,” he said.
Although the Mustangs have posted a number of lopsided victories early in the season, getting tough competition is what will help prepare the girls for the end of the season.
“We had a tight one over Lenape at the Southern tournament (over the holiday break), winning by 7,” Betson said. “That was good for us learning to play in a tight game, going to the free throw line late. We actually left some on the board from the free throw line so it’s good to be in those type of experiences to build for later.”
He acknowledged playing a top 10 team in Manasquan would help the Mustangs down the road.
“We want to be put in challenging situations because the most important basketball we play will be in late February and March and we want to be ready for that,” Betson said.
The Mustangs host Oakcrest at 5:30 p.m. Friday, host Atlantic City at 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, travel to Millville Thursday, Jan. 20, and then will host Ocean City at 11:30 a.m. Saturday, Jan. 22.