Staff Report
Chaves County Sports Report
ARTESIA — The Goddard girls ended their basketball season the way it started three months ago: with a loss.
But while the Lady Rockets fell 61-27 to Artesia — sending the Bulldogs to the 4AAAA title game vs. Roswell Friday — Goddard coach Greg Torres saw some bright spots in the season’s final performances.
“We played a lot better second half. We finished strong,” he said. “I know our shooting percentage tonight wasn’t very good. We had a lot of wide-open looks. A lot of easy putbacks, easy layups that we didn’t convert on.”
They were also 0-for-9 from the outside, which didn’t help.
“As long as we couldn’t knock down shots, we had a hard time scoring offensively,” Torres said.
But the Rockets did shoot well from the free-throw line, going 9-for-17 from the line, while Artesia was 19-for-33, and did manage to score 27 points, which is a lot for the team this year, and playing well when the press wasn’t on.
“(Artesia) had a huge second quarter that just killed us,” Torres said. “They pressed us in the first half, and we just didn’t handle the pressure well again throughout that first half. They were able to create a lot of turnovers and capitalize on those with points. Second half, we played fairly even with them.”
Goddard only trailed 18-8 after one, but 45-14 after that disastrous second quarter. They then played the second half close, trailing only 16-13.
“But they didn’t press us that second half. As long as the press was off, we were fine,” Torres said. “We just couldn’t match up with them well enough in the full court to break the press.”
Still, an 0-27 season doesn’t have Torres looking for more fertile pastures, especially considering the team will only graduate one, Bethany Johnston.
“We had a lot of young kids there at the end,” he said. “Seven of our 12 kids were either freshmen or sophomores, so we’re looking forward to big things coming in the off season and into the summer and should have a lot more kids with a lot more varsity experience.”
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