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Pride girls fall to Sonora in day two of tournament
pitman girls pic1
Pitmans Kaylin Randhawa quickly passes her Sonora opponents in attempt to score during Tuesday's tournament game. - photo by CANDY PADILLA / The Journal

Day two of the Pitman Holiday Classic didn’t go so well for the Pride.

Pitman beat Ceres in the opening game on Monday, 48-43, but didn’t play as well as they could have despite coming away with the victory.

Head coach Dustin Curtiss knew it as they met a very consistent Sonora team on Tuesday in the semifinal round of the bracket and lost it after turning the ball over 35 times for the game, losing 49-35.

“To be honest, we played about the same as we played Ceres since we barely won and we kind of got lucky,” said Curtiss. “Ceres outplayed us and against Sonora we had too many mistakes, just throwing the ball away and stepping out of bounds and throwing it away, can’t do it against a good team.”

Sonora went up early, extending their first quarter lead to 12 and led 17-5 by the start of the second quarter.

Pitman steadily cut the lead after pushing in the second, eventually outscoring Sonora 10-6 but the Wildcats still held an eight-point lead by halftime.

Sonora's consistency of scoring and rebounding as well as playing full court press took a toll on Pitman early and really knocked them out of the game.

By the start of the fourth, Pitman was trailing by as many as 18 points and the Pride dropped the second of their last three games.

“Right now it’s something that we are pondering about because we seem to be missing a lot of shots and some of them are easy shots and I don’t know, but we will fix it,” said Curtiss. “That is where we are not consistent, where we finish or not because we gave up too many points tonight.”

Sophomore Whitney Barnes, who has only been back for about a week, was the top contributor for the Pride after finishing with a double-double, adding 12 points and 11 rebounds for the game.

Kaylin Randhawa and Michelle Robinson each finished with 6 points for the game.

“Whitney is still working her way in, she just got back last week so we are easing her in, she is working her way into it, but she played well tonight,” said Curtiss. “If she is more consistent then the minutes will add up but we are just working her in.”

Pitman will take on last year’s tournament winners in Livermore High at 6:30 p.m. today.

“It will be a good competition, no cake walks from here on out,” Curtiss added.