Oconto Falls High School faces an uphill battle entering the 2014-15 girls basketball season.
The Panthers will be without five key graduates after coming within one game of reaching the WIAA Division 3 state finals a year ago. The Panthers (22-4, 13-3 Bay Conference) tied for second in the Bay with Hortonville last season.
The graduates include McKenna Larsen, who scored a career-high 31 points in the 64-31 state semifinal loss to Kettle Moraine Lutheran en route to Bay Conference Player of the Year honors and a spot on the all-conference first team.
“We are going to have a hard time replacing (Larsen),” coach Mike Kaczmarek Jr. said. “She will be irreplaceable. Everyone is going to have to step up their game to be competitive.”
Larsen led the Panthers in 2013 with 447 points and averaged 18.6 points per game.
The Panthers will also need to replace second-team all-conference forward Carly Lemke. She was second on the team with 231 points, averaging 10 per game.
Despite the losses of Larsen, Lemke, Rachael Winter, Aleesha LaCount and Elizabeth Watzka, the Panthers return five players with varsity experience, including two starters — senior guard Elizabeth Manns and junior guard Bailey Wolf.
Manns was third on the team in scoring as a junior, averaging 8.2 points per game, and was an honorable mention in all-conference balloting.
“We are going to need to have (Manns) step up her game and light up the scoreboard,” Kaczmarek Jr. said. “We are going to be more of an inside-out team this year.”
Wolf will be counted on as the Panthers’ leader in the backcourt.
“Bailey Wolf will have to step it up,” Kaczmarek Jr. said. “She is going to be our point guard. We are going to have to look for her to score a lot of points.”
Forward Madison Helmle came off the bench to play in 10 games as a sophomore.
“(Helmle) will be on our starting rotation, and serve as our three-guard, or off-guard,” Kaczmarek Jr. said.
Starting at forward along with the 5-foot-7 Helmle will be 5-9 senior Kayla Virtues, who played in six games last season.
Kaczmarek, Jr. said he expects four players from last season’s junior varsity will see playing time: sophomores Jenny Kreuger and Lindsey Schroeder, Josie Ausloos and Cailin Cleary.
“They will have to give us some valuable minutes,” he said. “We do not have much of a bench. We will have to develop a bench, and that takes a couple of months. We are very young.”
Categories
