By Tom Robinson, NEPABasketball.com
The Crestwood girls have a different look than a year ago in their first season under head coach Don Hopkins.
The Lady Comets opened this season with a 35-point win over a Wyoming Seminary team that won two-thirds of its games last season.
It was a big change from a year ago when Crestwood started with a 49-point loss to a Dunmore team coming off a state championship game appearance.
The non-league opener was just the latest positive hint that better times are ahead for Crestwood after going 3-20 last season and failing to post a win in 14 Wyoming Valley Conference Division 1 games.
Those hints started with stronger performances down the stretch a year ago.
The entire starting lineup is back from a team that closed out 2019-20 on a 14-game losing streak, but came within three points of upsetting eventual District 2 Class 5A champion West Scranton in the quarterfinals after losing by just five against District 2-4 Class 6A champion Hazleton Area in the regular-season finale. Hazleton Area had tied for first place in the division standings.
“Last year, we were pretty inexperienced,” Hopkins said. “We certainly have more experience.”
That experience includes Helena Jardine and Jaden Weiss being back for their third seasons as starters.
Jardine, the team’s leading scorer the past two seasons, received honorable mention on NEPABasketball.com’s WVC Division 1 all-star team.
Brianna Wickiser and Julia Johnson join Jardine and Weiss as the senior starters.
Sophomore Julia Glowacki is the other returning starter.
Breanna Kijek, the team’s other senior, joins Cadence Hiller and Isabella Caporuscio from the team’s large sophomore class – Crestwood does not have any juniors on the roster – as what Hopkins expects to be his “key subs.”
The bench contributions, however, may not end there.
“We’re probably going to go a little deeper than that because of the masks,” Hopkins said. “We’re conditioning a little differently this year with the masks.
“We may wind up going 10 or 11 deep if we have to.”
