Reno girls run past Carson
BY JOE SANTORO
Special to the Appeal
RENO - Todd Ackerman believes in his Carson Senators girls basketball team. Now he wants the Senators to start to believe in themselves.
"I think some of what we're dealing with is a confidence thing," Ackerman said after an 82-31 loss to the Huskies Friday night at Reno High School. "I'm not sure they really believed that they could go out and win this game."
If the Senators had any confidence when they walked into the Reno gym, it all but disappeared five minutes into the game as the Huskies grabbed a 21-5 lead. A 3-pointer by Yvonne Hollett gave the Senators their only lead of the night at 3-2 just 90 seconds into the game.
The rest of the first half resembled a Reno layup drill as the Senators committed 20 turnovers by halftime. Carson had more turnovers than shot attempts (18) in the first half.
"When we get good looks we can shoot it pretty well," Ackerman said. "But it's hard to get good looks when you can't get the ball across half court."
Carson turned the ball over eight times in its first 13 possessions. Reno took advantage of the Senators' mistakes to take a 29-10 lead after one quarter and 38-16 at halftime.
"That's been our Achilles' heel all year," Ackerman said. "We have a lack of ball handling skills. You know, you probably couldn't tell tonight but we are getting better at that. The kids are working hard. But we just don't have that one or two kids who have the experience to handle that sort of pressure."
Points were difficult to come by for the Senators all evening.
Gina Bianchi scored five of Carson's six points in the second quarter and Hollett scored half of Carson's 12 points in the third quarter on a pair of 3-pointers. The only three points the Senators scored in the fourth quarter came on a 3-pointer by Emily Field with 1:07 left to play.
"We knew that they were young," said Reno coach Shane Foster of the Senators. "We just wanted to go out and play as hard as we could for as long as we could. That was our only goal."
It paid off in a flurry of layups and easy baskets. Reno scored the first 15 points of the third quarter to wipe away any confidence the Senators might have earned after holding the Huskies to just nine points in the second quarter. Hollett's 3-pointers in the third quarter cut Reno's leads to 57-21 and 59-26.
"We knew that Carson could shoot the ball," Foster said. "So we wanted to make sure we got a hand in their face as much as we could. We wanted to make sure they didn't get too many open looks."
Hollett's nine points led the Senators. Bianchi added seven as Carson fell to 4-19 overall and 1-7 in the Sierra League.
"As time progresses they are going to be a good basketball team," said Foster, whose Huskies improved to 8-0 in the Sierra League and 18-3 overall.
Reno enjoyed balanced scoring, led by 14 points each from Raimy Novacek, Abby Boorman and Sarah Finlay. Stephanie Rovetti chipped in with 10.
"Thatís the way we like it," Foster said. "We haven't had a player score 20 points in a game yet this season. We usually have three or four girls score between 10 and 15 points."
The Huskies forced the Senators into 31 turnovers.
"We have good guards," Foster said. "We can usually get our hands on the ball. Our goal every game is to get 25 deflections. I don't know if we got that but we got a lot."
"We're learning," Ackerman said. "We tend to telegraph our passes a lot. It's just a lot of little things that we need to learn."
Carson shot just 12-of-36 (33 percent) for the game. The Huskies converted 36-of-59 (61 percent) of their shots, though many were layups off of Carson turnovers.
"When we could get them in a half court game, I thought we played pretty good man-to-man defense," Ackerman said. "But we just couldn't get them in a half court game enough."
The Senators will play at Douglas tonight.
"The thing I was most happy with was that we never quit playing hard," Ackerman said. "We're young. We only have three girls with limited varsity experience. The rest are up from the junior varsity and freshman teams. But they come out every game and always give me great effort. That's all I can ask."