'We haven't played our best game yet': Tuslaw girls basketball looks to build off tough loss

TUSCARAWAS TWP. — The Tuslaw High School girls basketball team has proven to be a force on the court this season.

Their six-game winning streak ended Monday night in an early-season showdown against Waynedale. But the Mustangs remain confident in the direction of their season despite the 45-36 loss.

For Tuslaw head coach Kathryn Rowbotham, the mindset was to break the game down into quarters and try to focus on one quarter at a time. Despite scoring more than half of their points in the fourth quarter, the surge was not enough to overcome a strong Waynedale team.

“We won in two of the four quarters, but we didn’t score enough in the third quarter,” Rowbotham said.

Both teams entered Monday with 6-1 records, making this a highly anticipated matchup of Division III teams.

Waynedale head coach Rick Geiser knew Tuslaw would be a tough opponent to beat.

“They do a lot of things really well,” Geiser said. "They are a tough matchup to guard and they are long in their zone which makes it hard to get shots around the hoop."

After the game, it was clear that the main takeaway for Tuslaw was preparing to potentially face Waynedale again in tournament play in February or March.

“The girls will be ready. It will be another good battle to play them again,” Rowbotham said.

Moving forward, Tuslaw is able to rely on its depth and variety of scorers. Consistently, the Mustangs have been able to have between five and seven players score each game for them. Their guard and post positions have been able to work together in order to make this happen.

“I love to see that in the scorebook because that means that it’s not just a one-person effort,” Rowbotham said.

The dynamic of the players working together is also something helping Tuslaw progress this season. The Mustangs returned the majority of their starters from last season, helping build the cohesion early on.

Junior forward Destiny Dulkoski has scored double-figures in every game for Tuslaw, with a high of 29 in last Saturday's win over Norwayne. Two other Mustangs, though, have been leading scorers in other games — Breanna McCabe and Malia Mizeres.

“It’s a team thing,” Dulkoski said. "It’s not just me. Whenever we won, we saw that we could do more and we just kept going for it."

Hard work and dedication to the game in the offseason has led to major gains for the team. Many of the athletes showed up daily in the summer in order to improve in various aspects of the game, such as shooting and strength training, to prepare them for when the winter season rolled around.

“They were really effective at taking what they have practiced and translating that onto the basketball court,” Rowbotham said.

With its 6-2 start, Tuslaw's future looks promising. Rowbotham has no doubt the Mustangs will be ready to face more tough opponents throughout the season which will eventually prepare them for tournament play in a couple months. Being at their best comes from finding their own individual strengths while staying within their team concept on the court.

“These girls have the skills to go pretty far. We haven’t played our best game yet,” Rowbotham said.

Needless to say, the Mustangs are excited to see how the rest of the season plays out.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Tuslaw High School girls basketball's offseason work paying off