Staff photo / Brian Yauger Pymatuning Valley senior Julia Hitchcock is defended by Badger’s Avery Rice, left, during Wednesday’s game in Andover.

ANDOVER — Sitting below .500 at the beginning of the month, Pymatuning Valley has been strong in February. The Lakers added another win to their total on Wednesday, taking down Badger, 42-29, for their sixth straight victory.

The teams went tit-for-tat in the first half, but in the final minutes, Pymatuning Valley began to pull away. They held the Braves to 11 points in the second half.

“We wore them down,” Lakers coach Michael Cole said. “We were a little deeper. We played more girls, especially in that first half. A lot of my younger kids got to rotate in. I think they kind of got a little tired with their injuries, too. They’re pretty thin right now.”

Both teams have been battling the injury bug this season, but Pymatuning Valley is reaching the light at the end of that tunnel. Eralyn Lockwood, who returned to the lineup, has been a defensive staple for the Lakers.

“It’s just one of those years. You deal with it,” Cole said. “You’re lucky when you don’t have any, and Badger’s dealing with the same thing. We get where they’re coming from.”

Sadie Paul and McKenna Jordan led the way for Pymatuning Valley (13-8, 8-4 NAC), each with nine points.

While the talent is there, despite the injuries, Cole isn’t satisfied with this group. He knows they can do more.

“When they put it together, we put a good game on,” Cole said. “We just got to keep working. There’s still things to work on, even with a week and a half guaranteed, so we’ll see.”

One of those things is aggression on the ball.

“We need to be more aggressive going after the ball,” Cole said. “It was kind of apparent where it seemed like they came up with every loose ball. Sometimes that’s luck, but most of the time, that’s effort. Sometimes the ball just bounces the wrong way, but a lot of time, that’s effort. We’ve just got to get better at that, being a little bit more physical.”

They close the regular season out with Poland, a team Cole is familiar with, going head-to-head with the Bulldogs often while he coached at Champion. They’ll make for a great test before the tournament begins.

Badger has a trio of games left on its schedule before the Braves get into tournament play. They host Windham this evening, and then play Bristol on both Saturday and Tuesday to end the regular season.

Badger coach Patrick Carney views this as a chance to really refine things before the postseason.

“The next three games are big for us,” he said. “It’s an opportunity to try to fine-tune some things that we need to get better at heading into the tournament. We have all conference opponents that we were very familiar with. It will be a good test for us to finish a season strong, and hopefully we can build some momentum going into the tournament.”

One thing Carney wants to see in the next three games is points.

Senior Brianna Lendak led both teams with a game-high 12, but there were too many missed opportunities that hurt them on Wednesday.

“It’s going to be hard to beat anybody scoring just 11 points in a half. Especially a solid team like (Pymatuning Valley), they’re really playing well,” Carney said. Ultimately, the ball just didn’t go in the bucket. I don’t fault our girls’ effort at all. I thought our girls played really hard tonight. We did some good things, but we have a lot to clean up. We turned the ball over a lot, missed a lot of easy shots, and those are the plays that you can’t have happen for you to beat a good team.”