Cardinal girls team still finding its way

Lawrence girls basketball

By: Jim Green
   The Lawrence High School girls basketball team clearly is ahead of where it was at this point last year. It’s just that the Cardinals haven’t progressed quite as much as coach Gregg Zenerovitz might have hoped.
   Lawrence dropped to 1-3 Friday with its second straight loss, a 48-34 defeat at Bordentown. While the slow start is not any reason to panic yet, the Cardinals certainly will have to pick it up soon if they are going to reach the state tournament this season.
   "Our defense still isn’t anywhere near where I hoped it would be at this point," Zenerovitz said. "That needs to get better."
   Freshman guard Ashley Russo led the Cardinals in scoring for the third time in four games, dropping in 11 points, while senior guard Krista Regan chipped in with nine for Lawrence, which trailed by just seven early in the second half. But a 12-0 third-quarter run by Bordentown blew the game open.
   "It really comes back to things we can control," Zenerovitz said. "Playing defense and communicating are two things we need to work on. I look at it as a challenge. It’s things we can fix, and I’m hoping sooner than later. I’m the coach. I have to keep stressing this in practice."
   The Cardinals were coming off a 59-25 loss to Hamilton three days earlier. Regan and Reem Bichara each had seven points, while Russo added four. But the Cardinals struggled to play with consistency on either end of the court and dropped to 0-2 in the Colonial Valley Conference.
   While the Bordentown loss was disappointing, Zenerovitz thought he did see some positive developments.
   "We played better, but the defense isn’t where it needs to be at this point," he said. "It was an improvement in that we kept competing until the end. Our communication got better, but it still needs to improve."
   The season, which began with two encouraging results — a competitive loss to Notre Dame and a win over Morrisville — suddenly has hit its first speed bump.
   "I saw a lot of good things in the Notre Dame game that I haven’t seen since then," Zenerovitz said. "I’ll take the heat for that. We’ll keep stressing the fundamentals. Until we master them, it will be tough to do some of the other things I want to do."
   The Cardinals will have a chance to quickly turn things around as they compete in Hopewell Valley’s John Molinelli Memorial Holiday Tournament this week. They were scheduled to play their first-round game against Pennington on Wednesday. Depending on how they fared in that game, they either will play in the consolation game at 2 p.m. or the championship game at 5 p.m. today (Thursday).
   "I look at it as wide open," Zenerovitz said. "The mentality has to be, if we play well, we’ll be in the game. Instead of worrying about the other team, we should be worrying about ourselves."