Coming into their Feb. 5 matchup against Mamaroneck, the New Rochelle girls basketball team knew that their margin for error—and available reserves—would be miniscule. But despite suiting up just six players in a league tilt against the Tigers, the Huguenots showed no ill-effects of being shorthanded, as they would go on to top Mamaroneck 57-42.
With a host of players unable to attend the Saturday game due to standardized testing and other factors, Huguenots head coach Donald Ross knew that he would be forced to ask a lot of the girls in attendance. The message from the outset was clear, he said; everyone would be asked to dig deep for a win.
“On the bus, I told the girls that they were going to need to give 120 percent today,” Ross said. “They didn’t have any other choice.”
That effort was evident early on, as the Huguenots jumped out to an 11-8 lead in the first quarter. Heading into the second, Ross went to the bench for the first time, inserting center Makira Bunsie—normally a starter—who reeled off eight points in the quarter to help the Huguenots head into halftime with a 28-20 cushion.
“We had our rotations planned out ahead of time; we started with a smaller lineup because we thought the matchups worked in our favor,” Ross said. “And then putting in Makira, she gave us a huge lift in the second quarter and we needed that.”
Bunsie would score 10 more points in the second half as the Huguenot pulled away from their hosts, finishing with 18 on the day. Teammate Rylie Rosenberg led all scorers with 20, while Mamaroneck was paced by 18 from eight-grader Addison Dorfman.
After the game, Ross admitted that while he was not concerned with the conditioning of his team, he was forced to tweak the game plan a bit to slow down the tempo.
“We started out running the press, but we couldn’t be as aggressive as we normally are,” he said. “I didn’t want them to pick up fouls and get into foul trouble.”
The loss was Mamaroneck’s first since Jan. 21—their first meeting with the Huguenots—but the Tigers (10-7) will look to close out the regular season with a two-game set against Scarsdale and a Feb. 14 contest with Blind Brook.
With the victory, New Rochelle has now won six of its last seven games to put the team at 12-4 on the year. With tough matchups against Ursuline (15-2) and Hastings (13-1) looming, they will look to close out the regular season on a positive note and fine-tune their game before the playoffs.
“They really played their hearts out,” said Ross. “They came out here and grinded out a win knowing we had a lot on the line.”
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