After losing to Jackson in a tight game in the district finals to close the 2012-2013 season, returning players on the Oakville Senior High School varsity girls’ basketball team hope to get back to that point this year, but it isn’t going to be easy.

Tigers head coach Aaron Bosch told the Call that his team is missing a lot of offense from last season.

“We lost a lot last year. We had four seniors that left and one was a First-Team, All-Conference player in Aaryana Cook,” Bosch said. “She averaged 19 (points) a game and we’re really going to miss her scoring ability.

“We don’t really have anybody that can create their own shot this year. So a lot of our offense is going to have to come out of a system. So we are going to struggle to score a lot this season.”

On defense the Tigers are going to have to focus their efforts on playing a man-to-man defense, which is something they kind of got away from last year.

“We also graduated a lot of size from last year, so on the defensive end rebounding-wise, we’re going to really have to work hard to compete,” Bosch said.

“So I think were going to be better defensively because we’re going to go back to a more traditional man than a zone because last year we were so big that we could do some zone.”

Despite having a lot of youth and some fine-tuning to do, Bosch is optimistic about the 2013-2014 season.

“I think we’ll struggle early on until our youth and inexperience kind of figures out what’s going on, and then they’ll compete with most the teams on our schedule,” he said.

But members of this year’s squad possess all of the intangibles, according to Bosch.

“They are a really good group to work with. They are very coachable,” he said. “The chemistry on the team is really good. They get along very well. They share the basketball — all those kind of intangibles are there.

“We just don’t have a ton of offensive skill. Right now, we are struggling to get the ball in the basket, but hopefully that will come. But they work really hard and I think they will improve as the year goes on.”

Returning starters Alyssa Norberg, Taylor Ventimiglia and Favor Oparaji will help lead the charge this year. They will need to lead by example and help instill in their teammates what they learned from last year, according to the coach.

“I think they learned last year what it takes to win games. I think last year they finally saw what it takes to win because we won some games against some pretty decent teams,” he said. “So I think they know what they have to put into it and how they have to practice.

“They have to pay attention to detail and that kid of stuff and they know you can’t just walk out on the court and show up and think you’re going to win a basketball game.”