The Aggies were in the consolation game for the Long Beach invitational today and
playing the home town Long Beach State
49’ers. Their team’s star player, Shanaijah Davison, had actually committed
to NMSU before Coach Trakh left for USC.
Adam Young described the
attendance at the Walter Pyramid as
“Slim,” which is terrible given that it was a home game. He thought that Aggie fans might have been
equal to the Long Beach fans there. In
the pregame, Coach Atkinson was
totally okay with Brooke Salas’ last
shot yesterday and would call for it again.
I agree. Sometimes the rim just
doesn’t care who’s shooting at it.
The 49’ers came out in gold uniforms and gold shoes with
black socks. No comment. It wasn’t that quiet during the game, but I
could clearly hear Coach Atkinson on sidelines at times. In the first quarter, Adam was impressed with
Davison’s ball-handling moves while driving the lane. The Aggies also had trouble defending 6’5” Emma Meriwether. Too
bad Aissatou Fall isn’t ready for
prime time, because she’s the only one on the Aggies that could really match up
with her.
Gia Pack got a
great finger roll shot off an assist by Zaire
Williams and drew a foul for a free throw.
Gia came on late to spark a 10-0 Aggie run. It was 18-12 Aggies after 10 minutes, with Gia
putting up 13 of those points. Brooke
was having some trouble guarding Meriwether, as she was giving up 6 inches on
her. In the second quarter, Brooke still
found a way by getting a steal off her by yanking the ball from her under the
basket. Meriwether came off with an
injury from falling. Brooke started
heating up in the meantime with the shooting and defense. Meriwether did come back in and started
dominating again. It was 33-26 Aggies at
the half.
Adam came back from a break at halftime with something like
the official Long Beach State rap going in the background. Yeah, don’t get rid of your actual fight song
just yet guys. To start the third
quarter, Brooke fell down in the lane and still made the shot and got a free
throw. She can’t help scoring at
times. She had 9 points halfway through
the quarter and got the Aggie lead to 16.
Gia also came up firing to push it to a 24-point lead. Monique picked up her fourth foul on a last
second shot by Long Beach, which cut the lead to 60-43 Aggies.
Scary moment in the fourth, Gia had a hard landing, but she
stayed in. I had to take a phone call at
this point. When I started listening
again, the lead was down to 13 about halfway through. The Aggies were shooting well. Adam was amazed that they were 14 of their
last 17 attempts. Suddenly, Brooke fouled
out of the game. This came as a surprise
to me. Maybe she picked up a couple
while I was on the phone. If she was guarding
Meriwether the whole game, I could see where she could have gotten into
trouble. The crowd sensed this was a
turning point and got louder.
The Aggies were committing lots of turnovers in this quarter,
13 in all. Their lead went down to 7
after a 49’er three-pointer. I could
definitely hear the crowd cheering them on now. With two minutes left, Gia was tripped
bringing the ball up court under pressure.
She hurt her wrist falling to the floor. Now Gia and Brooke were both out. This was getting too frightening. There was some confusion on the call on the
play. Adam was once again questioning
the officiating. The Coach even questioned
the score on the scoreboard shortly afterward. The Aggie lead was only 6 with one minute to
play. Gia came back on with her wrist
taped up. Unfortunately for Long Beach,
their shots stopped falling in and they had to start fouling, which only
increased the Aggie lead. 72-63 Aggies was our final.
In the postgame, the coach was a bit angry over that fourth
quarter collapse along with the Aggies’ 24 turnovers in the game. Gia
Pack lead the way with 27 points and a purple heart (along with some purple
bruises). Brooke Salas had 23. Zaire Williams only had 6 along with 9
turnovers. At least the team was +8 in
rebounds. For the 49’ers, Emma Meriwether had a breakout game
with 23. She usually scores 7. Long Beach is 2-10, but as advertised, they
were a better team than their record.
I called Gia Pack
the Aggies’ team leader. Brooke has
stepped up in the meantime, but I still kind of stand by what I said. This team would probably work better if Gia
did the majority of the scoring, Brooke got the rebounds, and Zaire distributed
the ball (along with both of them scoring).
If anyone else on the team could step up in rebounds and assists to free
them up to shoot more, that’d be great. Brooke
getting most of the points is causing that gap in rebounding (at least on the
offensive end). But, if Brooke is
hitting the buckets, you gotta keep giving her the ball. I think today sort of shows that my ideal
would work, but it’s hard to trust putting the girls in certain roles when they
go through those long dry spells of shooting.
The team is still trying to find its footing.
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