The Husky girls basketball team finished the season with a 40-24 loss at home to Central.
The loss had a bigger point spread than Thursday night’s 37-30 loss at Taft, but Coach Dave Goetz said the girls turned in a much better performance.
“We went over to Taft, and for whatever the reasons, didn’t lay a very good game,” Goetz said. Plagued by turnovers, the Huskies weren’t making the crisp passes or running their offense the way they can, he said. “We weren’t doing what we had been doing. We should have done better than we did.”
Although the Val-Co names haven’t been released yet, three Sweet Home girls received recognition, Goetz said, adding that shows that the other coaches know Sweet Home’s girls have some talent.
On Friday, in their final game of the season, “we came out with a lot of emotion, a lot of heart,” Goetz said. “We were in the game,” although without focus in the first half.
It didn’t pay off early as Central jumped out to an 11-2 first-quarter and a 28-7 halftime score, but it did pay off in the fourth quarter when the Huskies held Central to just two points, by Central’s leading scorer, Kasandra Ramirez.
“The girls just did not want to quit,” Goetz said, and they kept Ramirez out on the baseline and away from the middle where she is most comfortable dishing off the ball.
Against Taft, Ashley Danielson led the Huskies with 10 points. Alex Thompson added six; Hillary McCartin, six; Paige Niemi, four; and Nicole Fagan, four. Sam Vinson led Taft with 15 points. Sweet Home post Jenny Hamn was unable to play.
Against Central, Fagan led the Huskies with seven points. Hamn added six; McCartin and Niemi, four each; and Danielson, three.
The Huskies lost 86-22 at Newport on Feb. 19.
Overall this season, “I think the girls showed a lot of growth,” Goetz said. “They showed a lot of improvement.”
The scores didn’t really show that growth, but “I think they came a long way from the beginning of the season,” he said. They can bring the ball up the court under pressure. They can pass the ball. They can run their offense, and they can do it all well.
They do it all in spurts, Goetz said. What they need is to do that the length of the game.
“You’ve got to be patient,” Goetz said. With a little success, he thinks the team can expand on it, he said, and he thinks they improved more than any other team in the league. They played other teams much tougher than anyone else thought they could at the end of the season.
“It’s a shame the season ended when it did because I really think these girls were close to breaking out,” Goetz said, and he’s optimistic about where the program will go. Still, it will take more patience. The team lost its coach midseason, and Goetz, the high school athletic director, took over.
Next year will bring a new coach and a new system, he said, and that takes time to work out.
“It’s unfortunate there’s not stability there for them because they deserve that,” Goetz said. “I will work with the girls until a successful person has been hired.”