NORTHWOOD – Injuries and a season-long string of illnessess continue to hamper the Coe-Brown girls’ basketball team, which has struggled to settle on a consistent rotation of players. The Bears lost their most recent game to Lebanon, 49-40, on Tuesday night, them to 6-5 on the season.

Coach Joe Vachon, now in his 11th year, says the Bears still have a chance to earn a playoff spot.

“We just have a hard time getting into a groove with a certain group, and then what will happen is two will come back and we’ll try to insert them back in, and now that’s a change,” he said. “Consistency has been our issue, and it remains our issue until we can get everybody back and everybody playing on a regular basis.”

In a way, this game was a microcosm of the Bears’ season.

Whenever they got a slight edge, Lebanon found a way to come back and rebuild a lead. The Bears had spurts of good ball movement and found ways to get open shots, but Lebanon’s interior rebounding was able to snatch away opportunities for second-chance points.

Lebanon sophomore guard Summer Crowell led her team to victory with 20 points, notching 11 of them in the third quarter.

For the Bears, sophomore Emma LaPierre and senior Hannah Meehan each had 14 points, and senior Zoey Smith had 10. Lebanon’s good zone defense was able to keep the rest of the team at bay and generate turnovers.

“It was a tough loss. We just need to get our offense solid, and our defense needs to be better,” Meehan said. “Off the court, we’re a pretty close team, but on the court seems like we just don’t connect all the time. So I think just in practice, we need to start focusing more and working harder.”

For Vachon, it’s all about life lessons outside of basketball and making sure his team can stay mentally strong after losses.

“After you play basketball and after you go to college or you graduate high school and you go to work, you’re going to have bad days at work,” he said. “You’re going to have days that are really bad, and then the next day you have to decide when you get up, is it going to be a bad day because of yesterday or are you going to get up and have a good day because it’s a new day?”

Alexander Rapp can be reached at arapp@cmonitor.com.