The great hockey player Wayne Gretzky is known for saying, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” It’s safe to say Pitman’s varsity girls basketball team didn’t hesitate to let the ball fly during Tuesday night’s 68-32 victory over the Modesto Panthers to open Central California Athletic League play.
While the Pride entered the matchup 7-8 and the Panthers came in 0-9, Pitman was only able to muster a 17-8 lead by the end of the opening quarter. The story was simple — they couldn’t get a shot to fall, shooting 4 for 15 from the field. By halftime, the Pride’s top scorer on the year up to this point with 12.9 points per game, Liz Webb, was held to just 4 points. Meanwhile, second-leading scorer Dailynn Greener only had 8 off of 3 for 9 shooting.
Webb and Greener each came back strong in the second half to post 20 and 23 points, respectively.
“Things just weren't falling for them, and that happens to the best of us,” said head coach Parmine Randhawa. “Literally, I talked to Liz at half and I said ‘Go get shots on before the half ends. Go take some time to get your confidence up.’”
Webb finally got into her groove by driving in for layups twice to start the third quarter. By game’s end, Webb had put up 31 shots, making seven and drawing four fouls.
“We just had to keep driving and had to see a shot go in,” Webb said. “We needed to get going because we know our team counts on us to put something up.”
“Just needed to keep shooting until a shot went in,” Greener joked.
“She has the ultimate green light,” Randhawa said of Webb. “It wasn’t the first game that she's struggled. She had some good attempts. She got to the rim, but her shot wasn't falling. I think once she saw one go in during the game, her confidence really went back up.”
Greener explained that the slow start was also due in part to low energy.
“We were just slow coming out. Slow on the rotations,” she said. “We need to keep the pace up high, don’t play down [to anyone’s level].”
Webb added that, while they struggled a bit offensively, they were sounder defensively. Providing the spark on defense was Lexi Pulido, who finished the game racking up 6 steals and 6 rebounds.
“Lexi has worked so damn hard,” Randhawa said. “She's going to give me 100% of everything she's got when she's in the game. Today wasn’t any different. She went out there and she executed defensively. We were struggling offensively, but defensively, she was great. Her effort is huge moving forward.”
Looking ahead, the 8-8 overall and first-place Pride will look to improve to 2-0 in the CCAL when they travel to Modesto on Thursday to take on the 2-13 Downey Knights.