Milford girls basketball learning how to finish

MILFORD – The Milford High School girls basketball team learned a valuable lesson from its season-opening loss to Oyster River on Dec. 7, and it didn’t take long for the Spartans to prove it.

Milford won back-to-back games last week, beating Pelham and Con-Val at home, by doing what coach Steve Signor had implored his team to focus on doing.

“We took care of business at the end of the quarters,” Signor said. “In the Oyster River game, we didn’t close out quarters. That was our fault, why we didn’t win that game. We had focused the last few days on how to close out quarters. That’s big.”

In a 44-35 win over Pelham on Dec. 11, Milford found itself going into scoring slumps at the beginning of each quarter, but outscored the Pythons in the final minutes of all four frames by a combined score of 30-13.

Then on Thursday, the Spartans (2-1) saw its lead over Con-Val dwindle down to five points late in the third quarter. But Brittney White score five unanswered points of her own to end the quarter and put Milford up 37-27, and the Spartans continued that run into the fourth quarter.

In all, it was an 11-2 run that put Milford up by 14 points on the way to a 49-36 win. But perhaps the most encouraging thing about that run for Milford was who was scoring the points. Dina Pitsas has led the Spartans in scoring in each of the first three games (18.3 average), but the senior had just two during the run against Con-Val.

“I need contributors from all over the place,” Signor said. “We can’t have one girl scoring 50 percent of our points in a close game and expect to win that game. We’re not going to win. That’s something we need to focus on. In the end, we’ll have (Pitsas) scoring 30 or maybe 40 percent.”

While Milford is off to one of its best starts in recent memory, there are still things the Spartans need to work on before they get into the teeth of the Division II schedule.

“We’ve still got to work on our ball control,” Signor said. “We’re going to see teams in January that have very strong on-ball defense and we’ll have to do a better job. We’ll work towards that. That’s the biggest thing we need to work on.”

Milford will travel to Manchester West (0-2) on Thursday before participating in the Nashua North Holiday Tournament from Dec. 26-29. The Spartans will resume their Division II schedule on Jan. 4 at home against Souhegan.