Milford girls struggle in loss to HB

Thursday, December 22, 2011

MILFORD – The Milford High School girls basketball team is, as its coach said Tuesday night, a work in progress, but if hustle were worth points, the Spartans would have fared much better than they did against Hollis Brookline.

As it is, though, teams only get points for actually scoring points and there Milford came up short, falling to the Cavaliers 48-16.

The loss dropped Milford to 1-2 on the young season while Hollis Brookline went to 3-0.

“Not very good defense tonight which translates into not very good offense,” Milford coach Steve Signor said after the game. “I’m a great believer in, if you play great team defense, it translates and rewards you on the offensive end, and I don’t think we did.”

That said, Hollis Brookline coach Bob Murphy thought Milford played hard.

“They hustled the whole game,” he said.

But the Cavaliers had such a quick perimeter passing game that Milford had trouble keeping up.

“We instituted a new offense this year,” Murphy said, “which starts on the periphery, around the 3-point line, and we’re trying to really work the ball, hit the cutters going to the basket, keep a lot of motion going and I think that really helped us out.”

The Cavs came out roaring and jumped out to a 9-0 lead before Dina Pitsas could score for Milford. At the end of the first period, the Cavs held a 13-2 edge, led in that first period by Katie Stopera’s eight points.

The second was a little closer, as Pitsas scored all 6 points in the period for Milford to the Cavaliers’ 10 and, at the half, Hollis Brookline led 23-8.

The Cavs roared out again in the third, going on a 15-0 run before Milford’s Brianna Hoffman and Adelle Pitsas scored back-to-back baskets as the third period ended with HB up 38-12.

Pitsas scored all of Milford’s 4 points in the final eight minutes, hitting two free throws and a bucket as time ran out. The Cavs scored 10 points in the fourth.

Murphy said one of his aims this year is to get everyone into the offense.

“What was fun tonight,” he said, “is I had five seniors tonight and five juniors tonight and the kids that finished up the game were all juniors. And they did a good job of trying to work that ball also.”

But it was the opening quintet that set the tone, he said.

“They were good right from the get-go,” Murphy said. “On offense, on defense, they got a lot of steals off of presses. Milford had a lot of good kids out there. I think Dina Pitsas had an off night tonight and we were fortunate for that. Overall, I was very happy with the kids. We’re getting there.”

Milford’s Signor believes his kids will get there, too, but he sees a clear need and it comes before game time.

“When you come into these games, their defense is playing really hard,” he explained after talking to his girls after the game, “very physical, very aggressive. If we don’t play aggressive defense on our offense in practice, you come into a game, you’re not ready. And I don’t think we’ve been playing hard enough defense to pressure our offense.”

Nor did he believe the offense was playing hard enough in practice to pressure the Milford defense.

“I think that’s our biggest problem right now,” he said.

But he agreed that his team never stopped hustling.

“That’s the nice thing about these girls is, they won’t quit on you, they won’t. But there are things we can work on in practice. You saw probably from the beginning that we were struggling on that offensive end. That comes from not practicing hard enough on our offense,” he said.

Still, he is optimistic.

“It’s a work in progress,” he said.