Junior Mustangs win over Bobcats
The George McDougall Mustangs junior girls basketball team recorded its first win of the 2013 half to the Rocky View Sports Association (RVSA) league with a 56-34 win over the Bow Valley Bobcats in Airdrie, Jan. 16.
It was both teams’ first league game back after the Christmas break and it took a while for both teams to get back into the game mindset.
It took a few minutes for George Mac to find its groove, but when it did the team cruised to the win and is hitting its stride in time for the playoff push after a shaky start to the RVSA season.
“We slumped before Christmas,” said Mustangs head coach Marva Goertzen. “We took a bad hit and had one particularly disastrous game, but the girls came back and said they wanted to finish strong. All that matters is the final week and we’ll come ready to play.”
Goertzen credited the Bobcats for shutting down the key and pushing the Mustangs to the outside, but it ended up being where Airdrie thrived and its offence took off.
“We have a few girls who can shoot threes and we let them go and light it up in the fourth,” she said. “That’s when things started to click. There’s nights where nothing clicks, but tonight was one of those nights where everything did.”
Chemistry has been a factor in the team’s surge since Christmas, as well as the team’s individual dedication, Goertzen said. Every 10 days the team is required to shoot 300 foul shots and keep up their conditioning. As a result the team’s shooting percentage is sitting an average of 68 per cent, which Goertzen said is great for a junior varsity team.
“It’s making a difference in what happens in the game,” she said. “It comes down to foul shots and layups. If you don’t hit those you don’t win and our girls are committed to putting in the time.”
On the other side of the court, shooting percentage has been an issue for the Bobcats, a relatively young and inexperienced team, said head coach Scott Thompson.
“We were struggling to get back into the flow of basketball,” said Bobcats head coach Scott Thompson. “Our girls began to wake up in the third quarter and figured out what they were supposed to do. George Mac is a quality team, well coached and have an awesome talent pool, and that’s something we always have to figure out how to play against.”
The team is now 1-4 with its only win coming against Beiseker, Dec. 20, but Thompson added that the team’s growth is on a steady rise that will bode well once the post-season begins.
“I’m impressed with how they’ve come from the beginning where they didn’t know anything about basketball to coming in and being competitive against a team like George Mac,” he said. “It’s fantastic. In the past few years we’ve lost to them in the regular season and we’ve been able to beat them in the playoffs. Our objective is to get better before the season’s over.”
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