Wildcats prep for another run at girls county hoops crown

Even though it’s been two years since the Shoreham-Wading River girls basketball team won the program’s first Suffolk County championship, this year’s team fully remembers that run and a lot of the players, despite limited roles back then, were already on that varsity squad. This group is laser-focused on returning to that title game but they have to get through the semifinals first.

After finishing the regular season at 18-2, the Wildcats earned the No. 1 seed in the Suffolk County Class A playoff bracket along with a first-round bye. The final regular season game against Mt. Sinai, a 45-36 victory, clinched the first place spot in League VI. SWR will face off against No. 4 Islip in the semifinals at 7 p.m. on March 3 at Centereach High School.

The season sweep of Mt. Sinai was a defining moment for head coach Adam Lievre’s team which dropped both regular season games to the Mustangs last year before losing in the playoff semifinals to Kings Park.

“The core of this year’s team got a full year last year to acclimate to being the main players,” Lievre said. “Most of this group was on the bench for the county championship team. They played a major role and they were huge in practice. They played some minutes but they weren’t our crunch time players. The experience last year was big coming into this year.”

The vault to the top of the league was not expected this year after losing a major piece in Juliana Mahan to graduation. Mahan was the lone starter left from the 2023 championship team. The Wildcats lost their post presence but others have stepped up in her absence. The team, as Lievre has always emphasized in all his years coaching, is deeply rooted in maintaining a defense-first mentality.

That mind set leads to turnovers, deflections, and tough shots on a nightly basis. Lievre knows it’s the key to winning.

“It’s no secret that we’re not the best shooting team in Suffolk County,” Lievre said. “But we pride ourselves on keeping the opponent off the board. Our shots will eventually fall and as long as we’re making it hard for our opponents to score, we’re right where we need to be every game.”

The scoring load this year has mainly fallen on senior captain Alyssa Bell, the only one of the bunch who played significant minutes during the championship run. She was routinely the first player off the bench two years ago and made an instant scoring impact. Bell averaged 13.5 points per game this season. 

“Even though we fell short last year in the semifinals, our goal has always been to win the counties,” Bell said. “I remember what it was like winning the counties and that’s some experience I can bring to the table. But we want to take it a step farther this year and win the Long Island championship.”

Another player with some championship pedigree is Grayce Kitchen, who routinely comes away with more steals than one hand can count by constantly hounding the passing lanes. She’s also averaged roughly eight points per game this year.

“Right now we’re practicing hard and trying to work on our weaknesses,” Kitchen said. “I’m a senior this year so this is a must win game coming up against Islip. We want to get another crack at the championship.”

Islip was one of the two schools that found a way to beat SWR this season and Lievre is scouring over the game tape and coming up with a plan to minimize the mistakes that happened in that game. 

“I already have my handouts to give them about what went wrong,” Lievre said at practice last week. “Islip played a great game. Ultimately I don’t think we played that bad a game but we shot about 18% from the field. That’s just not going to win us games. I felt like we took good shots but just settled for too many threes. In a perfect world they fall, but we need to find other ways to score and that’s what we’re working on now.”