LYNNFIELD — The Lynnfield girls basketball team hasn’t spent much time on the court so far this season, and it showed Friday evening when the Pioneers fell 58-39 to Cape Ann League foe Pentucket at home in their season opener. The Pioneers, who picked up the game at the last minute on Thursday after Pentucket’s original opponent Amesbury canceled due to COVID-19 issues, have only had six practices so far this season.
“It’s been an interesting few weeks because we’ve only had a handful of practices,” said Lynnfield coach Jeannine Cavallaro, who is in her first year at the helm. “That’s obviously way too few practices to then go out and take on arguably the best team in our league. But even so, we were really happy to get out and play because we know that tomorrow isn’t promised. We had the opportunity to play and we took it, and it was nice to give the kids an opportunity to develop against strong competition.”
Senior captain Caroline Waisnor led the way for Lynnfield with 15 points and four rebounds, while senior captain Ava Buonfiglio had a big game with six points and 13 rebounds. Grace Klonsky had six points and five rebounds, Isabella George had four points and three rebounds and Abby Adamo had four points.
“I liked the fact that we were able to execute a lot of the gameplans that we put in,” said Cavallaro. “Our timing was off and our screening was off, but we ran the plays correctly and I thought that was good to see. Obviously your timing isn’t going to be great after less than a week’s worth of practices, so we know that will come.”
It was a slow start for both teams, but Lynnfield was able to keep the game close in the early minutes. At the end of the first quarter, the Pioneers trailed Pentucket 10-7.
But things started to get away from Lynnfield in the second quarter. After cutting the deficit to as little as two points midway through the quarter, Lynnfield all of a sudden went cold on the offensive end. Pentucket, on the other hand, got hot and started to stretch out its lead. By halftime, Pentucket was up 26-18. The Sachems never led by less than eight points the rest of the way.
Pentucket ended up extending its lead to more than 20 points in the third quarter as it coasted to a victory on the Pioneers’ home floor.
But despite the loss, Cavallaro knows there are plenty of positives to take away from Friday’s game.
“It was great to see live action, especially because our numbers are so low,” said Cavallaro. “We technically have seven active varsity players with three swinging up from JV, so we don’t even really have the numbers to run five-on-five in practice a lot of the time. To be able to step up against someone else, see what works and what doesn’t work and then how we need to tweak it so it does work is nice at this point in the year.”
Lynnfield (0-1) is back in action Monday evening (5:45) when it hosts rival North Reading.
“We were going to play Monday no matter what, so this game gave us a chance to see how we stack up against another team and see what we need to do to get better,” said Cavallaro. “We’re going to get back to practice (Saturday) and just get ready to go back out there and compete on Monday.”