LINDEN – Coming off a 3-20 campaign North Montgomery head girls’ basketball coach Ryan Nuppnau is excited about Tuesday’s season opener at Frontier. “I am excited about this season,” the sixth-year coach said. “The way the girls are coming together and learning things on their own is exciting. They are taking it upon themselves to work on things without me or the staff telling them to do things.” Part of the reason for the excitement is the fact the Chargers welcome back nine players who all saw some or considerable varsity time last year. SENIORS LEADING THE WAY Leading the way will be a trio of seniors – Maddie Moseley, Emily Sennett and Sidney Zachary.
North Montgomery senior Emily Sennett returns as the Chargers top scorer from a year ago at 6.9 points per game.
“Our three seniors have been great,” Nuppnau said. “They have put in the time and they have been great leaders.” Sennett is the team’s leading returning scorer as she averaged 6.9 points a game which was second-best on the team last year. She is also the team’s leading rebounder as she averaged 4.2 boards a game last year in 21 games. Moseley is the second-leading scorer coming back (4.9) and averaged 3.1 boards. EXPERIENCED DEPTH The team has two juniors returning as Makinze Rominger is coming back after a knee injury which cut her sophomore season short. She averaged 3.5 points and 3.1 rebounds. Grace McClaskey led the team in assists with 1.4 per game. Sophomores returning are Madi Welch, Lydia Dugard, Hadley Broadwater and Kaitlyn Rice. Rice led that group with a 3.5 scoring average and 2.9 rebounds a game. “The good thing we are deep and we have experience,” Nuppnau said. “We are also pretty flexible. We can go big (with Rice and Rominger on the blocks), we can go small or anywhere in between. That also means everyone is going to have to know more than one position.” NO POINT GUARD NEEDED Nuppnau said one of the biggest issues in the past has been ball-handling and breaking the press. This year the team is adopting a new strategy. “We won’t have a set point guard,” he said. “We are working with all our guards on getting the ball out of the nets or from our bigs and get it down the floor. We want to push the ball and if we can’t score on a fast break we are working hard on secondary breaks and then a lot of motion on offense.” The Chargers are hoping that this new outlook will help them improve on their scoring average which was just 33.8 points a game last year. Nuppnau also thinks this will be a much better shooting team. Last year the team only hit 29 percent from the floor (25 percent from 3-point range) and only 52 percent from the foul line. The JV team will be made up of seven freshmen. The last winning season for the Chargers came in 2012-13 when the team ended with a 16-7 record. The Chargers will open the home portion of their schedule Nov. 12 when it will play Elwood. The game with Parke Heritage scheduled for this Friday has been moved to Thursday because of the Wolves’ football team playing in the sectional final Friday. Chargers Schedule Nov. 5 at Frontier 7:30 p.m. Nov. 7 at Parke Heritage 7:30 p.m. Nov. 12 Elwood 7:30 p.m. Nov. 15 at Attica 7:30 p.m. Nov. 19 at Frankfort ‡ 7:30 p.m. Nov. 22 Sugar Creek Classic 7:30 p.m. Nov. 23 Sugar Creek Classic TBD Nov. 26 Fountain Central 7:30 p.m. Dec. 3 Faith Christian 7:30 p.m. Dec. 5 at Covington 7:30 p.m. Dec. 10 Tri-West ‡ 7:30 p.m. Dec. 17 West Lafayette 7:30 p.m. Dec. 20 at Crawfordsville ‡ 6 p.m. Dec. 27 Indiana Kitchen Classic TBD Dec. 28 Indiana Kitchen Classic TBD Jan. 7 North Putnam 7:30 p.m. Jan. 9 at Southmont ‡ 7:30 p.m. Jan. 14 at Greencastle 7:30 p.m. Jan. 17 Danville ‡ 6 p.m. Jan. 21 Seeger 7:30 p.m. Jan. 24 at Lebanon ‡ 6 p.m. Jan. 31 Western Boone ‡ 6 p.m. Feb. 4-8 IHSAA Sectional at Danville TBD ‡Sagamore Conference game Chargers Roster NO NAME CLASS 15 Madi Welch 10 20 Hadley Broadwater 10 22 Maddie Moseley 12 23 Lydia Dugard 10 24 Sidney Zachary 12 25 Grace McClaskey 11 31 Kaitlyn Rice 10 32 Emily Sennett 12 33 Makinze Rominger 11 Coach: Ryan Nuppnau