Neuqua Valley shows how good it can be

Practice didn't make Neuqua Valley perfect, but it sure made the Wildcats a much better girls basketball team.

The Wildcats on Monday afternoon showed the caliber of team they always knew they could be, defeating a talented Bloom Twp. team 61-49 at the 25th annual McDonald's Shootout at Willowbrook High School.

"We had that three-week stretch where we were playing every other day and every team under the sun that was phenomenal," Neuqua Valley coach Mike Williams said of the many ranked teams on his schedule. "The best thing that happened was we had a chance to practice, and this last week and a half it's really started to look like a team again."

"These past few weeks we were able to focus on what we were not doing very well," Wildcats senior Bryce Menendez added.

Playing some of the best teams in the state like Montini, Marian Catholic and Trinity earlier in the season, the Wildcats struggled to score. That didn't happen against a Bloom team with two players committed to Division I colleges, Katherine Strong (Virginia Commonwealth) and Danielle King (Marquette). They attacked the basket with confidence, not only making shots they would have missed earlier in the season but earning 27 free throws along the way.

"We've really worked on our shots," Menendez said. "We'd go in the gym, even outside of practice, go in the gym together as a team, start taking shots."

Leading by 6 at halftime, the Wildcats (17-5) took a 40-31 lead on a Myia Starks 3-pointer midway through the third quarter. Bloom never got closer than 2 points the rest of the game, and Neuqua Valley finished with a 14-5 fourth quarter.

Starks led Neuqua Valley with 21 points, Moon scored 20 on 14-of-15 free-throw shooting and the Lehigh-bound Menendez notched 16 points. Jamie McInerney added 14 rebounds.

It shows how confident the team is now, Menendez said.

"Absolutely, it is up there," she said. "We're playing together as a team, we're having fun, and that's what this is all about, having fun."

With less than a month to go in the regular season, the Wildcats like how they've improved.

"I think we're right there, right where we want to be," Williams said.

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