Following a 4-0 start to the season, Newtown High School’s girls’ basketball team had its toughest test thus far and came up just short in a 50-46 setback at Kolbe Cathedral of Bridgeport on February 20, then came up with a 55-26 triumph at Masuk of Monroe on February 23.

“We showed some end-of-game inexperience,” Newtown Coach Jeremy O’Connell said of the Kolbe game, adding that only senior captain Emma Magazu had any prior closely contested varsity game experience among the Nighthawks on the court that day.

O’Connell was pleased with the fact his young Nighthawks hung in there despite Kolbe draining seven 3-pointers and hitting a near-perfect 17 of 18 foul shots.

“In a normal season that’s a great building block loss. When it’s halfway through the season, being our season is so short, that’s a hard one to build off,” O’Connell said.

Newtown bounced back — “shaking the cobwebs off from Saturday’s game,” as the Newtown coach put it — with the victory over Masuk.

Chloe O’Connell hit a trio of 3-pointers and dropped in 17 points, Julia Gerace scored nine, Maddie Patrick had six, and Magazu and Allie Bradley each tacked on five in the Kolbe game.

Against Masuk, Gerace had 15 to lead the way. O’Connell scored eight, Bella Gerace had seven, and Patrick and Bradley both scored six. Izzy Caron and Macey Cuomo both had their first varsity points, with Caron scoring five and Cuomo adding two in the victory over the Panthers.

Bradley had six rebounds and O’Connell tallied five boards in the Masuk game. Magazu had three of Newtown’s 12 steals, and Julia had a pair of takeaways.

This leaves the team with just six games to play in this truncated regular slate before the conference tournament commences. Newtown hosts Stratford on Friday, February 26, then visits defending South-West Conference champion Notre Dame of Fairfield on Monday, March 1.