The San Saba JV Lady Dillos took on Merkel last Tuesday night in Merkel. All I know is that was the longest trip of my life it seemed like. I was a little worried how the girls would play after being on the bus for 3 hours, but they didn’t ever disappoint me! They came out strong and played hard the entire game. We ended up falling short to Merkel, 36-28, but I thought the girls gave a great effort.

We came out in the first quarter and was having trouble on the offensive side. I’m not sure how many layups we missed, but it was a lot. At the end of the first quarter we were down 7-5. I kept telling the girls to work on defense and get some turnovers, and they did just that. At half time, we were down by 1 still. (13-12)

In the third quarter we came out on fire. We got some steals and actually took a lead in the game. We had a couple lead changes before we went into a slump. We started making some silly turnovers and didn’t take care of the ball up front which cost us to be down 28-22 at the end of the third.

The fourth quarter was the quarter that seemed to really hurt us. I always stress to the girls that we HAVE to play 4 quarters every game and up to that point we had played 3 in my opinion, but we just needed to finish it off. The first two minutes of the fourth quarter killed us. Merkel decided to throw a press at us and we kept turning the ball over. They were able to get some easy layups and before any of us knew it, the score was 34-22. We called a timeout to get the girls straightened out and figure things out on the offensive end, and once we did that they went back to playing well.

Overall I thought they played hard the entire game and I couldn’t have asked any more out of them on the defensive end. Mikayla Cisneroz had a HUGE night on the offensive end scoring 20 points. Also scoring was Nickie Ortiz with 6 points and Kayla Kutin with 2 points.

We have another busy week this week as we play Goldthwaite at home on Tuesday, and then we travel to Mason this weekend for their tourney. Thursday we play at 2:30 against Junction and if we win, we will then play at 8:30 Thursday night against Llano. Then we will have to go from there on Friday and Saturday. It definitely is looking like a busy week for us though.

Thank you all for your continued support of the Lady Dillos and we look forward to seeing you all at the games!