DAYTON - Dayton High basketball coach Jason Santos would like to forget the first three weeks of January, and it's certainly understandable.
Santos' Dust Devils have lost seven straight Northern 3A games in that span, including Friday's 61-50 defeat at the hands of the Fernley Vaqueros.
Dayton dropped to 2-2 in pod play and 7-10 overall. The Dust Devils haven't won a game since their own tournament the second week of December.
And, with seven games left in the regular season, the Dust Devils' road to the postseason won't be easy with a game against Yerington, two games against Lovelock and two games against Fallon plus return matches against Silver Stage and Fernley.
"All we have to do is beat one of the 3A schools," said Santos, referring to Fallon and Fernley. "We're still in this thing."
True, but the Dust Devils are playing the rest of the season without senior captain Tyler Firestone, who was dismissed from the team recently for disciplinary reasons. That's a big blow to an already thin team.
Dayton was in this one until the fourth quarter. The Dust Devils, thanks to six points by Cody Yeater, six from Bernardo Macias and five from Dylan Taylor, outscored Fernley 19-12 in the third quarter to grab a 40-38 lead entering the final eight points.
The Vaqueros went on a 10-2 run in the first 2 minutes 44 seconds of the final quarter to open up a 48-42 lead.
Tim Klotz started the surge on a nice drive to the basket to tie the game at 40, and after a Dayton turnover, Steven Shaw drained a 3-pointer to give Fernley a lead it would never relinquish. After another Dayton turnover, Edwin Salse scored on a nice drive to the basket. Dayton misfired on its next trip down, and Cade Knutson drained two free throws for a 47-40 lead.
Yeater ended the drought with a lay-up with 5:39 left in the game, but Fernley got the lead back up to six after Klotz drained a free throw. Taylor's basket cut the lead to 48-44, but Fernley scored 11 of the next 14 points to put the game away. Knutson drained 10 straight free throws in the final 2:25 of the game. He finished with 19 points.
"It was our execution," Santos said. "The back side of the 1-3-1 (on offense) was wide open. Guys were doing jumping jacks out there and we just started to swing the ball around on the outside, and then they went to a 2-2-1, and our press break was non existent. We never ran it right the whole game. We let a 2-2-1 beat us.
"The third quarter we executed like we drew it up and made the plays. We would have had the lead in the first half, but we got killed on the offensive boards."
Fernley coach Derek Miller said his team has struggled in the third quarter. He said thathis team nearly blew a 12-point lead in a recent game. He was glad to see that explosion at the start of the fourth quarter.
"I don't know that we ever settled down offensively," Miller said. "We didn't run our sets very conistently. We took care of the ball and hit some big free throws down the stretch.
"We did a good job with our half-court trap. Defensively, we focused on Taylor (15 points). He killed us twice last year."
Taylor wasn't a huge factor during the game. His points were well spaced out, and he semd to have a plethora of defenders around him when he got the ball in the block.