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University girls basketball team hopes it’s peaking at right time

University girls basketball coach David Price talks to his team during a timeout.

 

MORGANTOWN, W.Va. — Considering University’s girls basketball team had more losses by the first week of February than it did all of last season, it’s hardly a stretch to say the Hawks haven’t accomplished everything they aspired to.

A 67-48 setback to Wheeling Park in an Ohio Valley Athletic Conference semifinal left University at 11-7 overall on Feb. 3 with four games remaining in its regular season.

However, UHS has reeled off three consecutive wins since and ahead of Wednesday’s regular season finale at Lewis County, the Hawks (14-7) hope they’ve found their stride at the perfect time.

“We’ve been talking in practice and (head coach David Price) has been saying we’re finally at that point where we’re about to play championship basketball,” senior wing Ashten Boggs said.

The message seems to have gotten across to Boggs. A Class AAA first-team all-state selection a season ago, Boggs poured in 36 points last Thursday to lead the Hawks to an impressive 67-56 win over defending Class AA champion Fairmont Senior.

That performance followed a 25-point win over Weir in an OVAC consolation game and came two days before Saturday’s 41-point win over Spring Mills. The Hawks’ most recent victory came in far easier fashion than when they beat the Cardinals 53-40 on Jan. 4.

“We’ve been working on finding each other more and we’ve found a little more chemistry, which is what we’ve been looking for all year,” Price said. “I’m happy with that.”

Still, seven losses through 18 games was at least somewhat unexpected for a team that returned a strong nucleus from last season’s 22-6 squad, which finished runner-up in Class AAA.

The first five of those seven defeats came by single digits, while three have come against Wheeling Park (19-3) — the top team in the MetroNews Power Index following its third win of the season against UHS.

University’s only losses by 10 or more points came in back-to-back games (a 62-52 loss to Greenbrier East at the Big Atlantic Classic and the 19-point defeat to Park).

“Our emphasis lately has been defense, because we’d been letting teams put up a lot of points against us, and we’re not a fan of that,” Boggs said.

Boggs is one of five seniors on the roster and classmates Mallory Napolillo and Abbie Coen offer plenty of production and experience in the post. Fellow senior Isabella Bowers is a complementary piece in the backcourt. 

Add in a pair of underclassmen guards — sophomore Lauren Dean and freshman Emily Sharkey — and the Hawks can get production from a number of players.

Still, Boggs is at the forefront of her team’s success. At 5-foot-11, she has the size and aggressiveness to do plenty of damage in the paint. Yet Boggs also handles the ball and is plenty comfortable on the perimeter, making her a tough matchup for any opposing team.

“She was nursing an ankle about midway through the season, and now that she’s getting healthy again, the last four or five games she’s really played outstanding for us,” Price said. “She really did what you would expect a player of her caliber to do against Fairmont.”

With sectional play looming for the Hawks, they’ll need to be at their best if they hope to get back to Charleston next month.

Boggs believes that all starts with getting stops.

“We need to play defense and it’ll lead to the offense,” she said. “Fairmont was our third to last game of the season and going into bracket play, it boosts our confidence because we played outstanding defense.”