The Aplington-Parkersburg girls basketball team will travel to Hampton-Dumont-CAL Monday in the season opener for both teams. It’ll air on 99 The Wave and RadioOnTheGo’s YouTube channel.
Coming off last year’s 15-8 season, the Falcons will have two returning starters and some experienced rotation players to build around. Leading scorer Kolbie Wangsness is back after 12.1 points per game last season, followed by Eva Walker at 8.8 and Ava Eddy at 7.6. With a heavy advantage in returning production, Head Coach Brady Driscol says there won’t be a lot on the scouting report.
“Last year they were pretty senior heavy I think, so they’ll have some new players out there,” Driscol says. “Obviously the third Valley sister will still be out there for them, but then a lot of new personnel I think for them as well. We’ll have some new ones out there too, so you can kind of look at last year’s game, but not too much because you can kind of see what they maybe like to do on defense, but because they had so many seniors and so much production that’s not there anymore, kind of have to throw out last year’s game and just see how the game flows from the jump and see what we got to do in the course of the game and make in-game adjustments.”
The Bulldogs went 21-3 with a regional final appearance last year, but only one starter is back. MacKenzy Valley was last season’s fifth-leading scorer at 5.7 points per game.
“Game one, you never know what you’re gonna get against a team,” Head Coach Miranda Stafford says. “So we’re gonna focus on what we need to do well. We need to come out, we need to be as relaxed as what we can possibly be. AP is always athletic. They’re gonna play hard because he always gets his teams to play hard. And I expect pressure, because we’re young and we’re inexperienced. I was proud of the way in our scrimmages that we’ve been able to handle that pressure. It’s a little bit different when it’s a game situation and those nerves are going, but we have to be prepared for that and be able to handle those storms. So if we can handle their pressure and be ready and prepared for full court, half court traps, things like that, I think that we’re going to be OK if we can make it into a half court game.”
Pregame coverage will start at 6:00 p.m., followed by the tipoff at 6:15.
