The Alvirne girls’ varsity basketball team didn’t get off to a great start, as the Lady Broncos lost to the Clippers and Astros in their opening week of action. The AHS squad lost 75-38 to start the season at Portsmouth and then fell 59-32 at home against Pinkerton.
The girls got a rather unfortunate couple of pairings to open their season, drawing teams that finished third and fifth in the state last season.
In their opener, it was a rough blowout on the seacoast at the Clippers, as the Broncos couldn’t get much going from tipoff in the game with the peak of the Broncos’ struggles coming from the point where they were outscored 31-14 in the final 14 minutes of play.
At their home game, Alvirne looked much better to start. As scoring bounced back and forth, the Broncos got the first points, before the teams got two shooting fouls apiece, with 7 of 8 free throws being hit to make it 6-3 Broncos early on.
After a 4-4 run by Alvirne’s Julia Adams and Pinkerton’s Elizabeth Lavoie, the score stood at 10-7 in favor of the Broncos. The Astros would unfortunately score the final five points of the quarter to make it 12-10.
The Broncos, after allowing the Astros to build a lead, tried to remedy the issue by shooting the three ball. Unfortunately, through the first half, they had not only fallen behind 25-15, but they were just 1 of 14 from behind the arc, which meant there were a lot of empty possessions for Alvirne and points left on the table. If Alvirne was to get back in this game, they would have to stop shooting threes.
After getting the first two points in a foul-filled third quarter, Alvirne allowed Pinkerton to go on a 14-9 run the rest of the third quarter, with most of the Broncos’ points coming off free throw to push the score to 39-26 Astros through three quarters of play.
The first 5:40 of the final frame led to the Astros going on a 16-1 run with the only point they allowed being off a shooting foul on a free throw. The game was now out of hand as the Astros led 55-27, more than doubling the Broncos score.
Alvirne would outscore Pinkerton 5-4 the rest of the way, bringing the final score to 59-32. The major storyline of the night was the Broncos shooting from three-point range.
They finished at just a 3/21 clip or just 14.28 percent. Had Alvirne hit on just half of the threes they missed, the game would have been destined for overtime had everything else gone the same.
If you’re a fan of the Lady Broncos, you can only hope that Alvirne will either improve their shooting from three-point range, or that Alvirne will begin to take their two point shots and save the threes for when they’re really needed.
