At 5-13 overall and 1-10 in the OAA White, two-games behind Lake Orion (7-11, 2-8), as of press time on Tuesday, the Wildcat varsity girls basketball team is winding down their season. Depending on their respective finishes, the Wildcats could still tie, or even place ahead of, the Dragons in the final standings.
The final two legs of a three-game homestand to conclude the regular season, Oxford will have clashed with the Lakeview (St. Clair Shores) Huskies of the Macomb Area Conference last night (Tuesday). Results were unavailable at press time, but will be covered in the March 4 edition of The Leader.
The Wildcats will round out their season against Lake Orion tomorrow (Feb. 27). Tipoff is at 7 p.m.
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Sandwiched between home games, the Oxford Wildcats girls’ basketball team took Interstate 69 West to battle the Davison Cardinals on Feb. 18. Members of the Saginaw Valley League, this game gave the Oxford girls a break from league play, following four consecutive contests against Oakland Activities Association (OAA) White foes.
Davison jumped out to an early lead and never looked back, winning 46-31. The Wildcats entered the halftime break trailing by 13 points, 27-14, and cut the deficit to 12 after three quarters, 34-22, but could not quite get within striking distance.
Olivia Dirkse scored a game-high 18 points for the Cardinals and teammate Oliva Gean added 13. Junior Emma Morris was Oxford’s lone player in double-figures, finishing with 10 points.
Returning home to the Ian Smith Gymnasium on Feb. 20, the girls welcomed in the Avondale Yellow Jackets, the top team in the OAA White.
Featuring, arguably, the OAA’s most dynamic duo in junior Brala Benion and senior Keiori Lee, the Yellow Jackets’ high-flying attack did not seem to match up well with a Wildcat team that has struggled to score the basketball at times.
Avondale prevailed, 60-47, extending Oxford’s losing streak to eight-games and securing the OAA White title in the process. While the result was disappointing, this was improvement for a Wildcat squad which had lost to the same team by 17 points roughly five weeks before.
Benion led all scorers with 23 points, doing so coming off the bench, no less. Lee tallied 18 points, but 13 of these came in the first quarter and 16 in the first half. Oxford senior Gabby Dinges shadowed Lee throughout the second half, holding her to two points in the game’s final 16 minutes.
Dinges and Morris each posted 15 points to lead the Wildcats. Senior Aleah Dymond played one of her best games of the season, contributing nine points and pulling down rebounds on both ends of the court.
With two more chances to snap this losing skid before the regular season concludes, head coach Rachel Bryer is proud of the energy and work ethic her girls are continuing to bring to practice each day.
“Usually, this part of the season is where you see some girls start to lose focus,” she explained. “This is the first time I’ve seen a team have more focus than ever at this point in the season. They (the girls) want to win and they’re doing all the right things in practice. We’re getting close.”
Morris is the team’s leading scorer and best perimeter shooter, but Dinges is the catalyst which makes Bryer’s team go.
“Gabby (Dinges) played a phenomenal game,” the coach shared. “Both guarding Lee and on offense. We knew we might have to put Gabby on Lee, and as soon as we saw her coming out and hitting all her shots, we knew we had to do that in the second half.”