Girls basketball: Vaqueros start crucial stretch with romp past Dayton
Robert Perea, The Fernley Reporter
Badly in need of a win after three consecutive losses and with a crucial games upcoming down the stretch, the Fernley High School girls basketball team removed all the suspense early in Wednesday’s 45-16 win over Dayton.
The Vaqueros held Dayton to two points over the game’s first 14 minutes, scoring the first six, then 12 straight after Dayton’s first basket. Then, they ended the game just as strong, holding Dayton scoreless for the last 11:51, while closing the game with a 16-0 run.
Nine different players scored the Vaqueros, who spread the playing time across the roster. Celeste Condie led the team with seven points, with Karli Burns, Willow Jacobson, Jaiden Sullivan and Erica Kingston all scoring six.
“We got everybody lots of minutes, and that was kind of the goal tonight,” coach John Rogers said. “We had lots of combinations that we don’t have most of the time, so based on that I though we played rather well.”
The Vaqueros are now 6-4 in league play, tied for fourth with Truckee, and with Spring Creek and Elko coming in this weekend, Rogers said the Vaqueros need to make their move now if they want to join the race at the top of the standings.
“We need to be 3-0 at the end of this week if we have any hope of getting into the top three of the league,” he said. “We’ve got a mountain to climb.”
The Vaqueros won at Elko, 49-43, on Dec. 14, but lost at Spring Creek the next night, 52-45.
“We’ll make some adjustments defensively, but we did whatever we wanted we wanted offensively against Spring Creek, we just didn’t make shots,” Rogers said. “And then we had too many turnovers in critical situations, so I think we’ve learned from that. I’ve got all the confidence in the world that we can be successful, but again, we got to make shots. You don’t make shots, none of it matters.”