Even with a team that featured just one senior last season, Northwestern finished 13-5 in the Colonial League, and reached the league semifinals.

With a 16-9 overall record, Northwestern also played in the District 11 semis.

Now, those young players have another year of experience and are ready for even bigger and better things.

“I like our progress,” said head coach Chris Deutsch. “We have six seniors who all got playing time last year, so that gives us some good experience. I think we’re further ahead at this point this year than we were last year.”

In most games, Deutsch will start at least four seniors, and isn’t ruling out the possibility that they’ll have an all-senior starting lineup for some games. Because the team has a lot of interchangeable parts on its roster, Deutsch is going to use that to his advantage to put together a starting five that he feels will best match up with the particular opponent on any given night.

Leighanna Lister averaged 12 points per game last season to lead the team, and is one of the six returning seniors on the roster. Current junior Sage Christopher started last season, and figures to be getting a lot of playing time again this season, likely cracking the starting lineup on most nights. Sophomore Sydney Sevrain got playing time off the bench last season, and will see that time increase.

Depth is also going to play a big role for Northwestern, with Deutsch planning on playing eight or nine girls on most nights. Last year, with only one senior, young players were bound to see a lot of playing time, but this season, Deutsch has freshmen who have come in to camp and opened eyes, which is likely to lead them to a lot of court time as well.

“It was so valuable last year to put them in that environment where now they know what to expect; it’s encouraging. There are some freshmen this year who are really going to challenge the older girls with their abilities, so we’re very fortunate,” said Deutsch.

While every coach would like to see their team put up big numbers on the scoreboard, every coach also knows that even the best of teams will have off nights shooting. Deutsch has always stressed defense, and this season will be no different. In addition to keeping their opponents off the board, Deutsch looks to generate points off the success of his defense.

“We start practice with defense and we focus a lot on that, because I always think that gives us an opportunity to keep ourselves in the game,” he said. “We’ve stressed an aggressive type of defense, maybe a full-court pressure defense, and we’ll change our defenses up. We will be aggressive and physical defensively, and that’s the way we play.

“When we’re really pressuring and getting turnovers, we get offense off of that and that’s how we’ve got to play. Transition-wise, we’re going to push the ball. We’re not going to be walking the ball up the court, we’re going to be looking to go and push the ball.”

Deutsch is looking for big things out of his team, having a strong group of senior players to lead the way with younger players who have already gained experience on the court last season.

“I’m very encouraged with what I’m seeing,” he said. “I think it definitely helped us for those girls to get their feet wet last year. We have a couple of other girls that played a lot for us last year, and we have a nice nucleus of older girls with younger girls. I really like our team a lot. If we get balanced scoring, that can take us to the next level.”