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‘We just ran out of gas': Coyotes lose by 20 after solid first half against No. 8 Chaffey

By Cheeto Barrera, Sports Editor, The Daily Independent

“Compliment the kids for hustling,”

Cerro Coso women's basketball coach Tom Heck is wishing his games could be shorter.

In Saturday's 74-54 loss to Chaffey (19-5 overall, 7-2 in the Foothill Conference), the 20-point margin didn't appear until the very end of the game, and most of the way the Lady Coyotes (6-11 overall, 0-8 in the Foothill) kept the deficit to less than double digits.
It wasn't until about the 10-minute mark of the second half did the game start getting out of hand. But, as Heck points out, he has seven girls to go up against the athletic, No. 8 ranked team in Southern California.

“Bottom line tonight, we just ran out of gas,” Heck said. “We played really well, I thought, for 32, 33 minutes. It was about a seven point then we lost our energy. When you're tired you lose your focus. Their pressure hurt us, but give our group credit, we made some improvement.”

The game could have gotten out of hand early, with the Panthers going on a 15-2 scoring run midway through the first half. When the run started, Cerro Coso had been winning 17-13 with 12:46 to play in the half.
Trailing 28-19, the Coyotes went on a mini run of their own, pulling to with in 30-28. By the half, Cerro Coso trailed 38-34.

After giving up a Chaffey bucket to start the second, Lashonda Jones drove in uncontested for a lay-up, prompting a very angry Chaffey head coach to call time-out.

Gary Plunkett gave his team a rather stern defensive “pep-talk” and the Panthers responded with an 8-2 scoring run.
From that point, the Chaffey lead was never in doubt.

The closest Cerro Coso came was pulling to within seven at 54-47 midway through the final half.

The Lady Coyotes were also hampered when their post player Mariah Bomberry got into fouled trouble with 12 minutes to play. Bomberry had been leading Cerro Coso in points scored with 12 in the first half.
She scored a 3-pointer before being pulled with her fourth foul on the night. Bomberry re-entered the game around the six minute mark, but had little impact the rest of the way.

“That really hurt us because we don't have any depth at the post position, none,” Heck said. “Our only other post player is Sheerena Gene whose only 5-8 and she's having a hard time jumping. Her leg's hurting and she can't elevate. We're grasping, I guess.”

Gene took the lead, scoring 11 points in the second half on her way to a team leading 17 on the night. Bomberry was second with 15, followed by Jones with 12.
Heck had plenty of praise for Gene, noting that she is going “on one wheel” and “playing on nothing but guts.”

“Compliment the kids for hustling,” Heck said. “We played (as) hard as we could. We actually got the ball inside some tonight. We tried to make a few adjustments at practice and we changed our defenses up, but according to them, their book, they shot 39 percent from the three.”

Chaffey had 24 points from beyond the 3-point arc, 12 in each of the halves.
Cerro Coso will host Mt. San Jacinto on Wednesday with tip-off scheduled for 6 p.m.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

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