After finishing off 2012 with a 42 – 38 win over Oxford, the Ansonia High School Girls Basketball team record stood at 4 – 3.
Since that victory, the Lady Chargers have won 5 of 6 NVL games and now stand at 9 – 4.
In that stretch of six games, AHS has won three road games against some tough competition.
They won 47 – 37 at Kennedy, who is 10 – 3, at St. Paul (7 – 6) 47 – 31 and at Crosby (6 – 7) 55 – 43.
The win at Crosby gave Coach Patrick Lynch’s team 8 wins and clinched their fourth straight CIAC State Tournament berth.
“This is my fourth year as the coach and each year we’ve reached our number one goal of qualifying for the state tournament,” said Lynch. “The credit goes to the girls, they’ve gotten better each day and really, that’s all I can ask for.”
Ansonia is led by their three senior tri-captains, Melissa Tirella, Tierney Lawlor and Quanisha Finney. Each girl has started all 13 games and has averaged close to 30 minutes a game each.
“It’s hard to take any one of them out of the game,” Lynch said. “They do so much for us and to have any of them not on the floor is a real struggle for our team.”
They are the team’s three leading scorers, Tirella (17.7ppg), Lawlor (12.2ppg) and Finney (5.4ppg), have the most steals on the team with 29, 18 and 11 respectfully. Lawlor and Finney both average 10 rebounds per game while Tirella leads the team with 27 assists and Lawlor is tied for 2nd with 24.
They have taken 172 of the team’s 194 foul shots and have scored all but 99 of the 547 points the team has in 13 games this year.
Ansonia has received contributions from two junior starters, Morgan Westine and Grace Keener and 2 sophomore reserves, Jackie Daniels and Quentesa Robinson to round out the Lady Chargers rotation.
Westine is tied for 2nd with 24 assists and has taken over point guard duties at times and Grace Keener has averaged 6 points and 5 rebounds a game over the last 6 games.
Daniels and Robinson have given Ansonia some depth recently and have both been seeing more and more game action as they improve.
“Morgan and Grace were really thrown in the fire from day one,” Lynch said. “Neither of them had ever played above the JV level before this year and they have really come along nicely. Jackie and Quentesa have slowly gotten used the Varsity level and hope to see them keep improving.”
Ansonia plays two road games this week. Wednesday night they travel to Holy Cross (9 – 4) and Friday night they take on Sacred Heart (6 – 7), both games start at 7pm.
The Lady Chargers next home game is Tuesday, January 29th when they host 1st place 12 – 1 Watertown.