Creating a competitive, winning attitude has done wonders for the Washington-Liberty girls basketball team this season, after coming off a one-win district season a year ago.
New coach Liz Altmaier, promoted from the school’s junior varsity staff, guided her team to a 46-36 win at home over Wakefield in the Liberty District regular-season finale.
It was the team’s fifth district win and eighth win overall and gave it the No. 4 seed in next week’s district tournament. As a result, the Generals will get a home game in the first round of the tournament in a 5:45 Monday rematch against the Warriors. A loss would have meant a lower seed and road game for Altmeier’s team.
Friday’s win also snapped a three-game losing skid to Wakefield. Harriet Shapiro ran the offense for most of the game and finished with seven points, helping her team pull away in the fourth quarter.
“Getting better started in the last offseason,” Shapiro said. “Our new coach came in and we’ve improved. We continue to focus on the things that we’re good at.”
Shapiro’s younger sister, sophomore Frances, added seven points and Malek Ben Hammouda tallied a team-high eight points. Sophomore Julia Kelly scored all seven of her points in the fourth quarter, which began with her team holding a one-point lead.
Wakefield played its trademark aggressive, marking defense, led by the interior play of Gigi Denton and tight perimeter defense by Loren Nelson, Dominique Harris, and Maya Solis.
Solis had a game-high nine points and Nelson chipped in eight, but Wakefield could not cut into its deficit in the fourth quarter.
W-L junior guard Harriet Shapiro said her team’s defense was prepared for the Warriors to take the first good shot that came to them, and then block out its opponents, calling Wakefield a team “good at crashing the boards.”
Wakefield found success when it drove the lane and scored or drew fouls. It led by as many as five points in the first quarter.
But too often, it relied on three-point shots and missed no fewer than its first 15 long-range attempts. The Warriors did hit two three-pointers (Lucia Jacobsen, Helena Helms) to cut into what had become a double-digit W-L lead late.
“They adjusted to us, but we didn’t adjust to them,” Denton said. “We were rushing our shots, and the rims here are really tight. We didn’t put enough arc on our shots.”
Denton helped to limit Generals’ freshman center Eve Jungman (six points, 12 rebounds), whose prettiest basket was a quick-release, free-throw line shot in the third quarter.
“Our players want to be good,” said Altmaier, who played at Harvard. “Everything we do in practice is competitive. We’re learning how to play hard and under pressure. We’re learning to be clutch and play to win in close games.”
Altmaier said Wakefield’s inside defense and that of its guards is tough, “so we had to work to move on our off-ball movement on offense and find open teammates cutting to the basket.”
–Paul Bergeron
@PaulBergeron3