Madera South suffers blowout loss against Sanger Apaches
Wendy Alexander/The Madera Tribune Madera South’s Jayshawn Thomas drives for a layup. Thomas scored 10 points in a loss to Sanger on Friday.
The Madera South boys basketball team fell behind early and found it difficult to recover, losing 75-50 against the Sanger Apaches.
The Apaches pushed the tempo from the beginning, leading to several fastbreak opportunities ending with layups or three-pointers Friday night.
Madera South head coach Jody Sharp said it was not the matchup that was a problem, but it was more about his team’s effort.
“I thought we could match up against that, but we showed no heart,” Sharp said. “I mean the bottom line is, they played harder than us. We didn’t and so they made a lot of threes in the first half.”
Sanger guard Cameron Stanley caused problems for the Stallions. The senior led the Apaches’ attack, finding open teammates several times or creating shots for himself. With four three-pointers in the first half, Stanley ended the night with 27 points.
Sophomore Luke Dillon was also deadly from outside, hitting three 3-pointers and ending the game with 18 points.
“We just didn’t do a good enough job. They did a lot better job,” Sharp said. “They were a lot more aggressive than we were, they played a lot better defensively than we did. They deserved to win that game. In all facets of the game they were better than us tonight, no question.”
The Stallions had a brief stretch of success before halftime, when they cut the lead from 15 points down to eight. Senior guard Jonathan Garcia sank a three-pointer, while junior Jayshawn Thomas scored four points during that stretch to help cut the lead.
Garcia finished with seven points while Thomas scored 10. Jonbree Neal, Jose Villifan and Joel Galvan also added 10 points each.
“I thought we did a really good job in the second quarter, got the ball in, scoring points,” Sharp said. “We did a good job, relaxed against the press.”
After taking a 33-25 lead into halftime, the Apaches pushed the lead back to double digits in the third quarter. Stanley and Dillion stayed hot from the three-point line, helping the Apaches put the game away for good.
“It’s just about people having pride in themselves and wanting to play hard and wanting to do that together. Right now, based on where we’re at, that’s not happening at the moment,” Sharp said.
Sharp said that it’s not easy to help today’s youth overcome adversity.
“Today’s youth, they have a hard time being able to come overcome adversity,” Sharp said. “It’s even more difficult now in my 36th year than what it was when I first started coaching. There’s no question about that because we live in a different day and age, because kids have a different mindset now than what they did way back 20 something years ago.”
