Madison Parrish scored a game-high 26 points, and the Comets remained unbeaten with a 51-37 victory over the Lakota West Firebirds on Monday night.
Former assistant Gideon Dudgeon took over for Rob Matula, who retired last season after coaching 19 years at Mason while accumulating a 376-98 record.
The Comets went 24-3 this past season and were Division I regional semifinalists. Mason has won four consecutive Greater Miami Conference titles — including back-to-back seasons as outright champions.
“Coach Dudgeon, he’s been with the program before I was even at Mason,” said senior Madison Parrish, a West Virginia commit. “So, he definitely knows the program well and sort of what was here before our class’s time — the class of 25.
“We’re just trying to continue that winning legacy at Mason and sort of take what Coach Matula left and just carry it on.”
Mason has moved out to a 6-0 start under its new direction.
“It still doesn’t matter. It’s a different voice, and we’re doing things a little differently,” Dudgeon said. “The girls have been very receptive. We’ve also brought back an experienced team with nine seniors. The expectation hasn’t changed.
“We’re one day at a time. We’ve got one practice tomorrow, and then we turnaround and play Fairfield on Wednesday. We’re just trying to go 1-0 each day and get a little bit better. Hopefully once tournament time comes around, we can make another run if possible.”
Lakota West is under new leadership as well. Jay Chadwell has taken over following the retirement of longtime Firebirds coach Andy Fishman, who amassed a 497-170 record in 27 years at Lakota West.
The Firebirds are looking to bounce back from a 1-4 start.
“It’s been tough, but not in the sense of the girls holding back or anything like that,” Chadwell said. “It’s tough in the sense that it’s new — good, bad, just different on multiple level of things.
“To credit to them, they’ve come in full eyes, open hearts kind of thing and really trying to apply it. Just because you tried to apply it doesn’t mean that you’re going to master it in three weeks and four weeks. We’re running into some snags, but I thought execution wise tonight was as good as we looked, and realistically, that’s what you want. You’re working in the correct direction. So, I was proud of their effort.”
Lakota West led 8-7 after one quarter before Mason pulled ahead to take a 21-18 lead into the halftime break. The Comets outscored the Firebirds 17-8 in the third quarter to open things up.
“My biggest takeaway from the game is we were able to face adversity pretty well,” Parrish said. “This was Lakota West’s first home game, I’m pretty sure, and obviously the crowd was intense.”
Taylor Stanfield had five points and a game-high 11 rebounds for Mason, which shot 6 of 14 (43%) from 3-point range. Anna Habra added nine points.
“It’s always good anytime you get a win against a GMC opponent because of the rivalry,” Dudgeon said. “It’s still Lakota West, it’s a proud program. We knew they were going to come out fired up. They’ve been on the road the first couple weeks, and they haven’t played at home. We kind of expected that. We just had to settled down a little bit. But I think once that happened, we kind of moved into our gameplan.”
Katie Fox scored a team-high 18 points to pace Lakota West, which shot 3 of 14 (21%) from beyond the arc and 6 of 11 (54%) from the line.
“With the execution tonight, except early in the third quarter, I thought we kind of lost our footing,” Chadwell said. “For the most part, 28 of the 32 minutes I thought we executed well, and we got some good looks. We make a couple more of those good looks, it’s probably a different ballgame.”
Mason travels to Fairfield on Tuesday, while Lakota West hosts Hamilton.