Nikki Drew has seen a lot in her years of coaching high school girls’ basketball. None of it prepared her for what she’s been experiencing with Lakota East this season.

The youthful Thunderhawks opened a season-ending string of six consecutive road games on Tuesday night with a 43-35 non-conference loss at Mount Notre Dame in which they trailed, 17-3 and 31-16 and charged back to cut the deficit to 31-26 before running out of steam.

“I’ve been coaching a long time, and I usually have the answers, but they’re not flowing,” Drew said after the game.

The loss left Lakota East 6-11 overall, 6-6 after opening the season 0-5. Many of the problems can be attributed to growing pains. The Thunderhawks have one senior and eight sophomores on their roster. Three sophomores, a freshman and a junior started against the Cougars, and the rotation included three more sophomores and senior Kayla Lamar.

Lakota East committed seven of its 17 turnovers while Mount Notre Dame was building that 17-3 lead. The Thunderhawks settled down and started forcing turnovers, but the hole they’d dug for themselves proved too deep.

Drew wasn’t prepared to place all of the blame on youth, especially 17 games into the season.

“You can be young, but you can’t be young and immature on the court,” she said. “The turnovers are sometimes unforced. My biggest concern at this point is we don’t always play as one unit. Sometimes, they’re on separate pages. They have separate agendas. That’s a problem.

“We just have to keep plugging away. At moments, they look great, and you think it’s going to be contagious.”

One of those times was the 10-0 run that got Lakota East back into the game, capped by sophomore guard Leah Goodwin’s three-pointer with 17 seconds left in the third quarter. The momentum was lost when the Cougars opened the fourth quarter with a 7-0 run, which was capped by their second putback of a missed free throw in the game – the kind of fundamental lapse that would leave any coach exasperated.

“The game’s not that hard,” she said.

Lakota East ended up committing just two more turnovers than Mount Notre Dame, 17-15, and being outrebounded by only three, 33-30, while actually outshooting the Cougars, 36.8 percent (14-of-38) to 32.6 percent (15-of-46). Sophomore guard Sharmaine Wills led the Thunderhawks with eight points, while another sophomore guard, Kandace Satterwhite, grabbed a team-high eight rebounds, but Drew still was looking for signs of progress from her players.

The Thunderhawks still face the season-ending gantlet of five more road games, which is scheduled to start at Princeton Saturday at 2 p.m.