By Kristin Carpenter, Mountain Valley News staff
The Bruins tipped off against the Bears on Friday in a hard court matchup, and visiting Bears held the Bruins to their lowest scoring game of the season with a final score of 49-17.
During the first period of the game, the Bruins were unable to score any points and never recovered, scoring in single digits for the remaining three quarters.
Not letting the Friday night loss get to them, the ladies tried to rebound against the Coal Ridge Titans on Saturday, but despite scoring double what they did the night before, they suffered their second loss of the weekend.
“We were trying to regroup as a team and play hard, and go out there. We needed to score more points and I thought that could be a big win because we struggled yesterday,” head coach Allen Golden said.
In the first quarter they put up nine points, and 10 in the second, but were down 32-19 heading into the locker room.
“I told them to keep fighting, we had to do a little better job of taking care of the ball and helping out defensively and I thought we could have done a better job with that stuff,” Golden said.
In the third quarter the Bruins came out and Tani Zamarripa and Lindsey Gardner led the way on defense with a strategic double team that won the ball for the home team, but the effort ended in a turnover.
Two minutes into the quarter Jordan Smith gave the Bruins their first points of the half. Another offensive turnover sent the play to the other end of the court, but more sound play on defense brought it back the Cedaredge net.
In their own zone Kaitlyn Kissner and Kristin Gardner passed back and forth trying to slow things down on offense to get a good shot, but more missed shots continued their scoring troubles.
With less then one minute left in the third period, Titan Alicia Hampton was fouled and made one free throw, extending Coal Ridge’s lead, followed by Titan Paige Ryan hitting a last second three and the score was 52-25 heading into the final eight minutes.
In the final period of play the home team was able to score more points then they had in the seven previous quarters in the weekend, putting up 15 points.
After two free throws to Coal Ridge, Kissner hit a big two points under pressure, but the Bruins were unable to get anything going because the Titans went to the line again and extended their lead even further.
Zamarripa drew a foul and made one of her shots, taking the score to 55-28. With good hassle, Kissner scored again, and with more then half of the period left the home team was down by 25 points, but the ball continued to miss the hoop more then it found it and they lost by a final score of 58-40, scoring troubles being the main problem they faced.
“That’s something we are working on, that’s obviously the whole key, but we’re working on it and we took a big step today in the second half,” Golden said.
With the weekend losses Cedaredge’s record fell to 2-12 overall and 1-7 in the league. The team will be on the road Saturday in Basalt, and as the season winds down their next home game will be on February 7 against Hotchkiss with tip off at 4:30.
