GRANTS, N.M. - Sometimes you want to get the “hard game” out of the way first and the Lady Pirates faced two of their toughest district opponents back to back last week. They first played 6th ranked Valencia (13-5, 1-0) on January 20th at home and lost that contest 6039.
“Valencia was obviously not how we wanted to show up for our first district game,” said GHS head girls basketball coach, Jesi Mandagaran.
“Valencia showed up ready to play and we just couldn’t get going in a flow.”
Mandagaran added, “Anytime our point guard gets in foul trouble from the start we have a hard time getting into the flow of things—we also gave up boards and second-third shot opportunities.”
High scorers for the Pirates were Demi Martinez with 12, Kiana Guzman with 7.
On January 23rd they traveled to 9th ranked St. Pius (10-8,2-0) and lost that game to the Lady Sartans by a score of 71-55.
“We had a lot of turnovers and a really long scoring drought that started before the half of the 3rd quarter,” said Mandagaran. “While we held their main scorer to under 10 points –they had another girl who stepped up for them and they are great at both ends of the court.”
Kasey Baca and Promise Garcia led the Pirates with 10 points apiece in that game.
The Lady Pirates next will play Lady Hornets of Highland (10-6,1-0) at home on January 27th.
“We gotta take care of business and get our flow back,” said Mandagaran of that upcoming game. “We are young and still working on consistency with most of the time we beat ourselves.”
After Highland the Lady Pirates play Belen (7-13, 0-2) on February 2nd on the road.
The Lady Pirates are currently 5th in the district 5 4A and ranked 13th in