Fallon stumbles at tourney

It was a rough go for the Fallon girls basketball team last week at the Silver State Slam Tournament at McQueen High School in Reno.

The Lady Wave went 0-3 against their California competition and dropped to 3-6 on the season. Fallon lost 74-58 to Weston Ranch, 58-51 to Castlemont and 85-45 to Palo Alto.

Palo Alto bombarded the Lady Wave from the perimeter hitting 17 3-pointers.

Fallon coach Anne Smith, though, said her club must improve on several areas heading into Friday’s Northern Division I-A showdown at Truckee. Tip-off is at 6 p.m.

“Overall, as a coaching staff, we feel like we need to work on our press break,” Smith said. “We would break it once in awhile, and the other times it was chaos at its finest.”

Defensively, Fallon’s inability to help on the backside allowed its opponents easy drives to the hoop. In addition, the Lady Wave struggled breaking the full-court press, which resulted in turnovers and fastbreak opportunities for their opponents.

Against Castlemont, Dezire Hall torched the Lady Wave’s defense for 31 points on 14 of 16 (88 percent) shooting. Smith said most of those buckets were drives through the lane.

“That’s all she did was drive,” Smith said. “I think they only had seven shots from the outside. If this team is going to be successful, those are the two things we have to conquer. We have to change our thinking.”

Despite the defensive concerns, Fallon’s offense put up respectable numbers as Ali Tedford, Megan McCormick and Hannah Lindsay led the way.

McCormick averaged 12.3 points and Tedford 11, while Lindsay averaged 10.3 and had two double-doubles. Lindsay grabbed 10 rebounds against Weston Ranch and gobbled up 16 boards in the loss to Castlemont.

Smith was pleased with the effort throughout the weekend, but said her club must attack the full-court press defense.

“Our post worked real hard,” Smith said. “We told our guards they are to one-dimensional. We have to be a threat from the outside and inside. Offensively, I though we did alright.”

With a pair of league games looming in the next week, Smith said two wins are a must to keep pace with Elko atop the league.

“We can’t lose these games,” Smith said. “We walked away 0-3 in the tournament, but we saw some really good things and saw some things we need to work on.”