The DVHS womens varsity basketball team matched up against the Maria Carillo Pumas at home on Feb. 20, losing 45-40, putting an end to their season. The match was characterized by intense back and forth scoring between the Wildcats and the Pumas, with both teams overtaking one another at various points in the game.
The first quarter started off rough. The Pumas immediately took the lead, pushing through the Wildcats defense in the beginning, but afterwards were unable to make any more successful offensive plays until the very end of the quarter. However, the Wildcats were unable to follow through with their offensive strategies until after senior captain Keira Tom scored a three-point basket, in which the Wildcats took back the lead and attempted to put distance between them and the Pumas. This back-and forth scoring continued on the entire game.
“It got to a point where nobody was ahead by more than two or three points,” Varsity Assistant Coach Mark Luca explained. “It was tied after the third quarter. In the fourth quarter, we’d gone up by two points, but we’d been behind.”
Both the Wildcats and Pumas pushed to break the deadlock. They first went with their previous strategy of outspeeding the Pumas in order to switch the direction of play when the Pumas had their guard down. Meanwhile, the Pumas were constantly trying to use their height and physicality to their advantage. Varsity Assistant Coach Steve Martinez believed a few players had an especially impressive performance in these attempts, highlighting sophomore shooting guard Vanessa Nguyen and sophomore center Lauren Lohe.
“Vanessa played very hard, made a lot of key steals and made some key buckets,” Martinez explained. “There was a window in the first half as we closed where Lauren Lohe hit a three which cut the game to two.”
By the third quarter, both teams were visibly fatigued and began playing more cautious, spending time trying to find cracks in the opponents’ defense. The Pumas broke through their defense and managed to carve out a five point lead in the last few minutes of the fourth quarter. On the other hand, despite the efforts of the Wildcats, they weren’t able to break through the Pumas’ defense.
“We make a few buckets and get a few calls our way, and the game’s different,” Martinez explained. “If you look at it, [if] we played them 10 times, I think we’d beat them seven or eight [times out of ten]. Tonight just wasn’t the night.”
However, Luca believes that this experience will be a valuable one for the Wildcats, and believes the disappointment will subside in the coming days.
“If this is the worst that they’re feeling at this young age, they’ve got it so, so good, because the rest of their life is ahead of them,” he said.
Luca also explained how in spite of losing the first round of playoffs, the Wildcats were very fortunate this season.
“Here we are in the middle of February and out of over 1,300 schools in the state, we were ranked in the 10% of the state,” Luca explained. “Our seating was the 133th ranking. So there’s 1,200 other teams that wish they had been in our shoes to play in this game, like we were. They wish they had the chance to be able to play to win or lose.”
This game marked the end of the womens varsity basketball season.
