(Greenfield) Optimism surrounds the Nodaway Valley girls basketball program following a trip to the state tournament last year.
The Wolverines begin the year Monday night against ACGC. Here’s head coach Brian Eisbach, “We graduated 60% of our rebounding, 60% of our assists, and 34% of our scoring. Obviously we return our two leading scorers. But I will say I think the taste of state for our locker room was pretty big. This was the first summer when we had skill sessions and open gyms that we always had enough to scrimmage. We have enough kids, we have a lot of freshmen that are coming in excited and hungry.”
The big guns returning are Maddax DeVault and Lindsey Davis. DeVault averaged 23.4 points per game last season along with 4.9 rebounds, and 3.5 steals. Davis shot 37.8% from three-point range with an average of 13.9 points per contest.
The team has beefed up their non-conference schedule in hopes it will benefit them in the long run. They’ve been invited to play in two marquee events. The first is in Cedar Rapids on Rivalry Saturday, November 27th against 1A power Springville. The other is December 4th in the Prep Girls Hoops Shootout at Johnson against Westwood. “Trying to get our regular season schedule as tough as possible. We ran the table until our last game last year that was great, but you don’t learn anything about yourself in a forty or fifty point win.”
Eisbach comments on the style of play that this team will display. “We are going to continue to do us. Play fast, try to really control the offensive flow with spacing. Defensively we are trying to do some things maybe a little different this year. Maybe throw in some more zone. We’ve not been a zone team in the past. We want to press, we want to run and gun, and force the action.”
Several players will be stepping into bigger roles this year including, but not limited to Annika Nelson, Bella Hogan, Jorja Holliday, Megan McCall, Taryn Gettler, and Madison Carstens.
Nodaway Valley coach Brian Eisbach:
