Northwestern girls' head coach Chris Deutsch is preaching patience with this season's squad.

The Lady Tigers have just one senior on the roster, Paige Stitzel, and are without last year's leading scorer, Erika Thomas.But Deutsch won't be starting from scratch, as many of the players on this year's team saw significant playing time a year ago, when Northwestern was 16-9 overall and qualified for the Colonial League and District 11 tournaments."We have a young team this year," said Deutsch. "But we have a good nucleus of girls returning from last year that got playing time, and girls who we used off the bench who got some playing time. So we've got a lot of girls coming back that have varsity experience."But this is the first time this group is going to be playing together. We're looking at it like it's going to take some time early to gel. But as the season goes along, typically in our program, in all the years I've been here, we get better as the season goes along, and I always think we play our best basketball at the end of the year going into the postseason."Losing Thomas, a 1,000-point scorer who averaged 16.4 points per game, will certainly make extending that run of success more difficult, as will a tough opening slate that includes Whitehall, Allen, Palisades, Catasauqua and Jim Thorpe. Those contests come before a Dec. 21 meeting with defending league and district champion Southern Lehigh, which is currently on a 29-game regular-season winning streak in league play."Our schedule is very tough to start the year off with a lot of games against some very good opponents," said Deutsch. "So I think it's going to take some time to kind of mix and match."But I really like this group. I think our group has a lot of versatility in the sense that we have girls that can play multiple positions. We like to play an up-tempo game, we like to push the ball and we really rely a lot on defense. And I think that's going to be our calling card this year, is defense. If we can stop teams, I think that really plays into our (favor) … I think our defense is going to create a lot of our offense this year."Junior Leighanna Lister was Northwestern's second leading scorer a year ago, averaging 9.6 points per game. Lister should be a stabilizing force in the low post.Fellow juniors Abby Chisdak (3.4 ppg), Maya Hambrick, Katie Smith and sophomore Sage Christopher are all likely to be a part of the frontcourt rotation.Another junior, Gabby Sevrain (5.28 ppg), figures to be a major part of the backcourt rotation, as will Jessie Williamson, Sarah Sekerak and Stitzel. Look for freshman Sydney Sevrain to also be in the mix.Deutsch will be counting on a number of girls to keep the Tigers in contention this season."They just have to take some time for things to gel," said Deutsch. "But I like our group. It's a young group; I think we need experience playing together. With this whole group this is their first time playing together."But our goals are to qualify for the Colonial League and district playoffs. And once we get there, we want to look to make runs. Are we the favorite? No. But I believe we're one of the top four teams in the league. I believe we will be qualifying for league playoffs."And Deutsch knows what it takes to get there."We've been there. Our program has been to the big games and won a lot of the big games," he said. "The expectations are high every year. The goals are to get to the playoffs and do the best we can. It's about winning, and I love that, because people respect our program. People know what our program is and that's something to really be proud of."