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Ossining Girls Basketball Team Draws No. 1 State Preseason Ranking

OSSINING, N.Y. -- Ossining High School's girls basketball is ranked No. 1 by MaxPreps as a new season gets set to tip off.

Ossining High School's girls basketball team celebrates its fourth straight NYSPHSAA title.

Ossining High School's girls basketball team celebrates its fourth straight NYSPHSAA title.

Photo Credit: Contributed

The Pride finished 26-2 last season under coach Dan Ricci. The team opens its season on Dec. 3 at the Art Turner Tournament in Baltimore against Roland Park Country, also of Baltimore.

The Pride have won four straight New York State Public High School Athletic Association championships. They will seek to become the first team to win five straight this year under Ricci, who surpassed 400 career wins last year. Ossining has won seven Section 1 titles during Ricci's 26-year tenure as head coach.

Ossining's returning cast includes sophomores Aubrey Griffin and Kailah Harris. Griffin, a 5-foot, 11-inch guard, averaged 24.6 points and 9.9 rebounds per game last year.  Harris averaged 10 points and 8.2 rebounds The Pride did lose a key player in Shadeen Samuels, who averaged 24.8 points. A four-year starter, Samuels now attends Seton Hall.

Ossining will also benefit from the return of Andra Espinoza-Hunter, a 5-9 small forward. She played for Ossining while in seventh and eighth grade before spending three years at Blair Academy in New Jersey. Espinoza-Hunter has already committed to play next year at the University of Connecticut. She averaged 25 points per  game last year for Blair.

Espinoza-Hunter is the only senior on the team, but most of the other girls on the squad also played varsity minutes last year.

Ossining plays its home opener on Dec. 7 against Scarsdale. Click here for the Ossining schedule on MaxPreps.

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