The Pitman High girls started their second annual holiday tournament with a dominating performance over Pacheco, 68-42, however the Lady Pride were not able to hold on to that momentum for the following two rounds of play, and ended the tourney in eighth place.

After a confidence-boost victory over Pacheco, the Pride fell to Half Moon Bay in the second round, 28-63. This led to a third-place game against Central California Conference foe Golden Valley.

GV was much more prepared during Monday's final round of play and took advantage of a Pride team that struggled badly in the third quarter after turning the ball over 10 times. The game resulted in a 26-51 loss for the Pride.

“It was more of a methodical thing, they got hot and we went cold,” said Pitman head coach Dustin Curtiss. “They [GV] were attacking the basket pretty well and we were slow to get on transition and forced turnovers and they did things pretty well. I am happy we had some great competition.”

In total, the Pride ended the game with 22 turnovers.

The opening two quarters were full of turmoil as both teams played hard, but ultimately the Cougars headed into the locker room leading the Pride 24-13 at the half.

In the third, the Pride went cold as they looked like they missed almost every shot along with turnovers and were outscored 19-2.

“We did a pretty decent job in the first half, but the second half didn't start too good for us,” Curtiss said. “Those 10 turnovers really hurt us in the third.”

Then in the fourth, things settled down a bit after the Cougars took the press and pressure off the Pride.

The team leader in points was Barbora Jurcova, who finished with eight points and five rebounds, all of which came in the second half.

Hitting the basket also became the team's other kryptonite as nobody ended the night with double digit scoring for the Pride.

Second on the team in scoring was Kaylee Amendola, who ended the night with seven points and three assists.

“Nobody else did much else,” Curtiss said of his team's under-performance. “We missed some open shots and GV did great to press and we didn't even get a shot off at times really, but when we got a shot it was wide open and we missed it. They got us out of the rhythm, they did a good job of that, and we just couldn't make any shots.”

The Pride's next contest will be at Hughson against the Huskies at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday.