A dismal first-half showing and miscues on defense ultimately cost American River College’s women’s basketball team its 70-63 loss to Diablo Valley College Tuesday.
Sophomore guard Haleigh Filer led the team in scoring with 21 points.
Freshman guard Jennifer Manduca, who scored 15 points in the contest, said that the team’s main problem is how it starts the game.
“We didn’t start strong,” Manduca said. “We didn’t make our shots.”
Head coach J.R.Matsunami said that the team wasn’t able to make the shots it needed to.
“The key to this game was just hitting open looks, and we didn’t hit enough of them,” Matsunami said. “You may get the open looks but you’ve got to hit the open looks. That’s the difference between Golden State (Warriors) and the Lakers.”
Matsunami also said that injuries and certain players being unavailable may have hindered the team in this run, but is confident the team will make the playoffs.
“Our starting post and our starting forward didn’t play this game and they were our top scorers the last time we played this team, and we lost by double figures the first time,” Matsunami said. “We’re not looking at it as a losing streak, we’re looking at it as a building streak.”
“We know we’re going to make the playoffs, and this is building towards the playoffs,” Matsunami said.
ARC came out aggressive in the first quarter to take a 7-2 lead before Diablo Valley went on a scoring run to close out the first quarter to lead 15-14.
The second quarter belonged to Diablo Valley as seven of their eight players registered points and extended the lead to 41-25 at halftime.
ARC bounced back in the third by outscoring Diablo Valley by nine and closing the gap to seven points by the end of the quarter.
Despite getting the gap down to two points late in the fourth, Diablo Valley held strong and won the game by seven points.
An incident involving a fan in the bleachers resulted in the scoreboard and shot clock being momentarily turned off late in the fourth quarter. The incident did not affect the game.
American River will look to bounce back and stabilize its playoff hopes against San Joaquin Delta College on Feb. 5.
