The regular season is over and now the Pine Bush girls’ basketball team gets to sit and wait.

The team finished with a 48-34 loss to the Warwick Valley Wildcats, the top team amongst the Orange County Interscholastic Athletic Association Class AA teams, on Wednesday night at Warwick Valley High School.

“For being such good athletes and good basketball players, they play scared,” Pine Bush coach Michelle

Bouffard said. “I think it’s a lot that they’re young, but they turn it on it spurts and then it’s ‘all right, here we go’ and then it gets flat.”

Paige Giraldi led the Wildcats, who clinched the OCIAA Division II championship with the win, with a game-high 18 points and Megan Desrats added 11 points. The Wildcats built a 12-4 lead after the first quarter and a 25-11 lead at halftime.

Jah-esa Stokes led Pine Bush with 13 points. Pine Bush played the Wildcats even in the second half, closing to about 11 late in the third quarter.

“I’m happy because they didn’t give up,” Bouffard said. “It could have gotten away and gotten way out of hand. They didn’t and they kept plugging away.”

Had they managed to win the game, it would have put Pine Bush in a tie for first place in the OCIAA Division II. They finished second after their 62-45 win over the Valley Central Vikings on Feb. 14.

Ketura Rutty scored 21 points and grabbed eight rebounds and Stokes added 17 points, six assists and six steals. Kayanna Cauthen had a double-double of 16 points and 15 rebounds.

Pine Bush has more than a week before playing again as they finished the season eight days before Thursday when the sectional tournament seedings and matchups will be announced. The first games can be played Saturday at the home of the higher seed.

To keep any rust from developing, Pine Bush planned to scrimmage S.S. Seward on Tuesday.

“I said to them, it’s going to be like preseason all over again,” Bouffard said. “I can’t let them sit. We’ve got to work, and you’ve got to stay in shape because now you’re playing the best teams in our conference. So, now you have to be ready.”

It’s going to be a new experience for Pine Bush, which hasn’t made it to the Section 9 Class AA tournament in some time while the program has struggled. They broke through this season finishing the regular season with a 12-7 record.

With two wins each over the Newburgh Free Academy Goldbacks and the Kingston Tigers, Pine Bush could be seeded as high as third.

“This is an opportunity for them,” Bouffard said. “This is going to put Pine Bush on the map, so we’re going to prepare them for it. This team’s very close and I said the most important thing is they want to play for each other. You want to keep playing, so keep the season going by winning and that’s all you can do.”