Staff file photo / Preston Byers. Canfield guard Marina Koenig handles the ball during a game against rival Poland last season.

CANFIELD — Things will look slightly different for the Canfield girls basketball team this season.

Four of the Cardinals’ most productive players graduated during the spring, leaving head coach Matt Reel to look for new or more frequent contributors.

“You can’t replace some of the production we had last year,” Reel said. “We have two girls that are playing in college that played for us last year, so we’re just gonna try to do more of it by committee than we have in the past.”

The ‘committee’ will start with the team’s pair of seniors, Aleen Barakat and Marina Koenig, whose roles Reel said “are gonna really expand this year.” Additionally, Reel said juniors Jenna Triveri and Carly Fleming, who started for the Cardinals last season, will also be leaned upon quite a bit.

Triveri, in particular, will be relied on to assume greater ball-handling duties with the graduation of starting point guard Camie Dill.

“She’s handled the ball a lot for us in the past, but Camie was so good at it, so [Triveri] just kind of said, ‘I’ll be the secondary ball handler.’ This year, she’s going to be the first.”

Assisting Triveri in setting up the Canfield offense will be junior Lorieona Jannone, Sofia Castronova and Koenig, all of whom Reel said have previous experience running the point.

“When they’re coming up through the system, we always like to play a bunch of kids at point guard. So even if they’re not the point guard, per se, they at least have some experience doing it,” Reel said.

As a result of the key departures — Dill, Cami Hritz, Grace McQuiston and Macey Kalina played prominent roles in the Cardinals winning 17 games and reaching the district final — Reel said he is not sure who will be starting regularly for him to begin the season.

Instead, the 11th-year coach is prepared to “experiment” with lineups.

“We have had times where our top-eight players have all said they deserve to start, and there’s some other times where we’re not quite sure,” Reel said. “So I think we’re probably going to try to see what works and who is better starting, who comes off the bench. And maybe a situation where, depending on what we see from an opponent, we may start different people.

“I kind of foresee this year, instead of having a set lineup, it’s probably a whole bunch of different combinations depending on how we play.”

A challenge Reel expects his team will have to overcome is its relative lack of height.

Of the 18 players on its roster, Canfield has just two players — junior Ceci Muckleroy and freshman Becca Heikkinen — listed as taller than 5-foot-8. Reel said he has placed an emphasis on rebounding as a result.

Reel also said some of his players’ inexperience has shown itself in the preseason.

“[We have been] trying to adapt our players who have never really had varsity experience to understand how hard you have to play every possession,” Reel said. “I think we’re like a lot of teams right now, where we have a tendency to take a possession or two off. Teams we’ve been scrimmaging have made us pay for that.”

Scrimmages, as useful as they are, cannot completely simulate games. And Reel said he will be watching how his players, particularly the younger, less experienced ones, react to the pressure and stress that comes along with games.

“I think our girls are gonna give us great effort, I’m very confident in that,” Reel said. “But with first-time varsity players, you never know, when the lights come on, how they’re going to react in game situations. I think part of the thing, you have to be careful as it goes, to just be patient and let them get used to the game before we make a decision.

“We always like to say that we’ve got a bunch of ideas, but whether it’s our kids or not, that it’s kind of determined by games. We’ve put some things in, and they’ve been total failures. We said, ‘OK, that’s not real good for us.’ We’ll be doing that throughout the year.”

While he would certainly like to win the All-American Conference and a district championship come March, Reel said he wants his team to focus on the very short-term goals in hopes they lead to accomplishing bigger, longer-term ones.

“Let’s say you set your goal of a district title; when you win it, well then what? You’ve already met your goal, and you’ve kind of limited yourself a little bit,” Reel said. “Our goals have always been pretty consistent in that every day we’re here, we just want to improve. And the second thing we want to do is we just want to grow closer as a team. Each day, in each practice and game, if we keep improving, everything else will work out.”