Carson girls pull away with big second half
Dave Price
Not comfortable with an 11-point halftime lead against South Tahoe, the Carson High School girls basketball team was challenged by its coaching staff during the intermission on Saturday.
"Shari (Andreasen, assistant coach) challenged them defensively to reduce the amount of points they had given up and I challenged them offensively," Carson coach Alana Williams said. "We set some goals and most of those were met."
Carson scored 14 unanswered points to open the second half and then went on to post a 53-21 Sierra League victory against South Tahoe at Morse Burley Gymnasium. The Senators only allowed eight points in the second half as they improved to 3-0 in league and remained in the thick of a four-way race for first-place.
As it turned out, the second half surge may have been important because South Tahoe was hardly intimidated by the 24-13 deficit it faced at halftime, according to coach Chris Proctor.
"That was our best first half of the season," Proctor said. "We were kind of excited at halftime because in our past games, we've played a lot better in the second half than we have in the first, but we kind of had an inversion of that today. Carson made some nice adjustments at the half that worked out well for them."
Andrea Hoff scored on a putback to get the ball rolling for Carson. Nicole Scott hit a jumper, assisted by Ciarra Christian. Then Tabitha Adams took a pass from Christian and hit an outside jumper from the left wing and Katie Kotter converted a steal into a layup as the Senators extended their lead to 32-13. Christian sank a pair of free throws, Adams turned a steal into a layup and Kotter fed an inside pass to Nicole Scott to make it 38-13 with 3:54 remaining in the third period.
Adams finished with 13 points, Christian 12 and Kotter 10 to lead Carson offensively. Kotter also contributed five steals and five assists.
Senior guard Tiffany Pinson led South Tahoe with six points.
Looking at the Sierra League standings, Douglas leads the race with its 4-0 record, followed by Carson, Wooster and Reno at 3-0. Carson faces all three of those teams this week, starting Tuesday at home against Wooster, followed by a test at Reno on Friday and a home game against Douglas on Saturday.
"We're building toward where we want to be ... which is the next game," Williams said. "You can't look too far ahead. If you do, you'll get in trouble."