WW-PN pulls together for back-to-back wins

Potter’s wizardry off bench helps Knight girls’ basketball

By: Justin Feil
   In any of the previous two seasons, Brett Charleston would have been happy to talk about the future of the West Windsor-Plainsboro High North girls’ basketball team.
   Normally, the WW-PN head coach would have been thrilled to talk about the three freshmen, sophomore and junior that finished the last three minutes of Saturday’s 41-30 win over Princeton High.
   But Charleston is still trying to focus on this season, something that’s a bit new to the Knights, who are accustomed to focusing on finding something to build on after the yearly state tournament cut-off date. This season, two years of building have gotten the Knights where they’d hoped to be — in the Central Jersey Group III state tournament, which they’ll open at home next Tuesday against Middletown South — yet there hasn’t been a celebratory atmosphere.
   The Knights lost four of five games before beating Allentown, 43-34, Friday and then handling PHS on Saturday to improve to 13-9. WW-PN finishes the regular season hosting Hightstown 7 p.m. tonight and Notre Dame 7 p.m. Thursday.
   "We played some teams close, but we couldn’t get over the hump," Charleston said. "We had a meeting before this game. We were fractured. We weren’t playing as a team. Everyone noticed a difference.
   "Yesterday’s game was horrible," he added of the Allentown win. "This isn’t to take anything away from Allentown, but we just didn’t play well. We had close to 30 turnovers and they were like unforced errors in tennis. I told them what other people were saying, all the things I’d been hearing from parents, left and they talked about it. And it was better. They came out a little more inspired. This team was really splintered. I hope to get it back at some point, hopefully so we can finish strong."
   It seemed for a while as though WW-PN might have trouble finishing the game with enough players against PHS. The Knights already lost Cynthia Kao to a mild concussion suffered in the loss to Hopewell Valley last Saturday. Her backup, Samantha Yang, went down in the first quarter with a knee injury, one night after netting a career-high 15 points against Allentown.
   Charleston went deep into his bench — his future — to find Regina Potter. Potter, coming off a one-point game against Allentown, responded with a career-high 14 points in three quarters of action, but quickly reverted all credit to the team.
   "We were more on today," the freshman said. "I didn’t do it by myself. Laura (Trzasko) and Claire (Dysart) and everyone had a lot of assists today."
   Potter is a new face on the block, one that’s not even pictured among the varsity or junior varsity team photos in the game programs. She moved from Hamilton last June, and took a while to make an impact.
   "Regina started on the freshman team and she’s worked her way up," Charleston said. "We hadn’t seen her play until almost Thanksgiving, and then she went away over Christmas and missed three games. She’s been coming on."
   At first, Potter split time between the freshman and JV teams, then left the freshman team to play mostly JV while also dressing for the varsity games. But she’d never hit double digits in scoring in any varsity game until Saturday. Potter was just happy to see any action.
   "I don’t think about that," she said of playing time. "Whatever I play, I play."
   By the end of the game, she was showing the effects of playing earlier in the day in the Knights’ JV tournament game as well as most of the second and fourth quarters of the win over PHS.
   "The press that we were doing we do a lot of traps and we’re running around a lot," Potter said. "It’s a big difference between playing JV."
   Potter seemed to jumpstart the Knight offense soon after she was inserted in the second quarter. North led, 17-10, when Potter got an arm on a PHS pass, picked up the loose ball and finished the layup. She added another layup less than a minute later to give the Knights a 21-10 half-time lead.
   With 2:41 left in the third quarter, she gave WW-PN its largest lead of the afternoon, 31-12, with a layup off an assist from Trzasko, who finished with 10 points. In the fourth quarter, Potter scored the Knights’ final four points and with 1:04 left, she got the ultimate compliment when she was removed from the game, her first curtain call after a tiring performance.
   But it wasn’t enough to keep her off the court. She immediately shifted focus to her rec basketball game later that afternoon. And there are still a couple weeks of WW-PN games to think about for Potter, who brings an attitude that should help bring together the Knights.
   "When we play states," Potter said, "I’ll be there. It doesn’t bother me if I don’t get much playing time. It depends a lot on who’s on. If someone’s game is on, I don’t need to play."
   On the varsity, Potter can be found most often with fellow freshmen Brooke Weiner and Flynn Eisenman. They form part of a nucleus that is counting on making four straight state tournament appearances.
   "We’re the younger group," Potter said. "We kind of stick together. We’ll be all right. A couple of us have been moving up."
   And at the end of the season, Potter, who also played on the WW-PN freshman soccer team, finds herself just where she had put her highest pre-season hopes, when she knew almost no one on the team and knew nothing of the program or its history.
   "I was hoping to make it, just to suit up," Potter said. "As long as I get to play, it doesn’t matter where. I would have been fine being on the freshman team all year."
   But Saturday, the Knights varsity squad needed Regina Potter, just as they’ll need her for years to come. But for now, the focus is on winning this season, though Charleston couldn’t hide that he did like what he saw from his younger players Saturday.
   "The future is bright," he said. "They’re physically bigger and stronger than my older girls. They’re more athletic than some of them. I’ll expect this freshman class to be pretty good, and by pretty good, I mean win 20 or more games by the time they’re older."
   They’ve already helped the current WW-P North girls’ basketball team eclipse last season’s record 11 wins. With every win, the Knights rewrite their own single-season mark, and they’re hoping to set the bar pretty high for Potter and future classes. Lucky win No. 13 on Saturday may have helped do the trick.
   "We became more together," Potter said. "We were a little better than we had been. We brought more intensity."