(Oakland) The Riverside girls basketball team is coming off of a 5-17 campaign last season. They’ve upped their win total in three consecutive years.
Nine of the 13 players that make up the varsity roster are newcomers to the varsity level. Coach Mitch Rice comments on the core of this squad. “Macy Woods is our only returning starter from last year. We are excited to see what she can do. We have some girls that moved in that are going to do really well for us with Morgan and Madison Heiny.” Coach Rice says the list of prospects includes Elle Murry and could go on and on. “We have some freshmen that could contribute a lot. I believe we’re ten girls deep.”
Rice enters his second season as head coach and looks to build off of some improvement made last year. “Absolutely. We played really well. We went up and competed in our last game. We had a nine or 11 point lead in the 2nd round last year at halftime and just couldn’t figure out how to finish it. We did a lot of work this summer. Girls came in a few days a week and we went to a nice camp. Really impressed with the effort they put in after the season which I think kind of shows they wanted to continue what we built during the season last year.”
So far coach Rice has liked the effort he’s seen from his team in practice. “I like it a lot. We have 13 girls out this year and nine of them are new to our varsity squad. We are excited to see. The competition level is raised up in practice and they are all getting after it.”
The team held a scrimmage last week and coach Rice has identified rebounding as a key are to improve on. “We are not super tall this year. We are quick and athletic, but we have to do a better job of putting a body on somebody and boxing them out. We have to make sure we limit offensive rebounds by the other team. I think that will help us out a ton moving forward this year.”
The season opener for Riverside is on Tuesday, November 30th at AHSTW. We’ll have the game on KSOM.
Riverside coach Mitch Rice:
