Defense and tempo: the key to Revere girls’ basketball team’s success

By Dom Nicastro

The Revere High School girls’ basketball team opened up the New Year much like it did most of last month: winning. Nothing’s perfect, but the team has managed a winning record of 7-3 halfway through the season. The Patriots picked up two Greater Boston League victories this week and last and improved to 6-1 in the league.

The team beat Everett, 59-36. It had great ball movement and selfless play, according to Revere coach Ariana Rivera. Alisha Jean led the team with a monster game: 22 points, 12 rebounds and five steals. Shayna Smith added 14 points, six rebounds and four steals, and Belma Velic added 10 points and nine boards for the Patriots.

Revere also topped Somerville, 42-23. Senior Haley Belloise led with 15 points, followed by junior Velic with 12 points.

The Revere Advocate caught up with Coach Rivera for a Q&A at this midway point of the season:

  What do you like particularly and why about the team’s recent play? Our defense game is a huge strength for us. We have more length this season, which helps a lot on the boards and out on the perimeter. Our change in tempo has been a huge asset to our team’s success the past few games. At the beginning of the season, we struggled with our tempo and having a “slow start” to most of our early games. We have emphasized the importance of defense leading to our offense and overall, our offensive tempo.

  Who in particular would you say has shown great improvement and how so throughout the early season? I wouldn’t say that any one particular player stands out to me as most improved. As mentioned above, we struggled at the beginning of the season to find our offensive flow. Over the last couple of weeks as a coaching staff, we have emphasized the importance of players’ roles and being selfless with the ball. This, along with working on individual players’ basketball IQ, has been our turning point this season. We have our best games when we share the basketball.

  What areas can the team polish and how so? If you asked me this a few weeks ago, it would have been our free throw percentage, but that has increased, thankfully (56%). I would say an area we can polish as a team would be our average turnovers per game. Usually, when we keep our turnovers as a team to under 12, we see the results we want. Right now, we average about 17 turnovers per game, and we would like to see that more around 10-12.

  What have you noticed/liked from your captains and why? I like that our four captains bring their own spark to the team. We have Bella Stamatopoulos (senior) and Alisha Jean (senior), who are our more vocal captains. Alisha is not afraid to lead by example on the court and brings the hype with her hustle plays. Bella tends to be more vocal in the sense of holding players accountable on and off the court. She is always making sure people are doing the right thing and are where they need to be.

Haley Belloise (senior) brings positive energy and organization to our team as a captain. We like to call her “the Court General” because she does a great job of getting players to the spots they need to be offensively.

Belma Velic (Junior) brings her consistent and composed energy to the team. She is the captain players look to for composure in high-strung moments.

  How are the competitive dynamics of the Greater Boston League shaping up in this early part of the season? As a coaching staff, we preach the dynamic of the GBL and that the team who shows up to play on any given day, will be the team that wins. The GBL is always competitive, which makes league play something to look forward to. We are currently 6-1 in the GBL, with second-round GBL play right around the corner.