Stallions unable to match Knights

It was one those days for Madera South’s girls basketball team.

With a younger group of girls and a team that is still finding its legs, the Stallions have both positives and negatives to take away from 56-24 loss to Bullard at home on May 5

Madera South drops to 0-2 on the season, but there is still much basketball to be played and a County/Metro Athletic Conference title up for grabs.

“I thought there were positives and negatives from our game,” Stallions head coach Johnny Sharp said. “The negative is we do not understand the flow of the game just yet. Once we get that flow, we are going to do better but we have to run our system. We saw Bullard run their system tonight. I had some players on the sideline that should’ve seen the floor, but we also had some younger players get time on the floor.”

Six different Stallions got in the box score against Bullard. Arelis Chavez scored eight points, Alannah Ward scored five, Tabitha Hernandez scored four, Jonese Feliu scored three and Jocelyn Berrera and Maria Hernandez each had two points.

Madera South did their best to keep up with Bullard, but turnovers and a lack of shots dropping allowed the Knights to take off. Madera South tried to get the ball down low to Chavez as often as they could, but things didn’t go to plan for the Stallions.

“We’ve got athletes playing two different sports, so we don’t have an opportunity to have (Chavez) a lot in our practices, so we are trying to get the ball to her down low. We just aren’t doing a good job in doing that,” Sharp said. “Our post-entry passes are not where they need to be, so we need to work on that a little bit more.”

Chavez did her best down low, but the Knights were forcing the ball out of her hands and into the hands of her teammates who’s shots were not falling.

More than six times Madera South had a second-chance opportunity thanks to a total of 31 rebounds. Three Stallions — Chavez, Hernandez and Berrera — all had more than five on the night.

Despite the final score, the Stallions are just getting their legs after an up and down offseason and a season where there are multiple sports that normally don’t mesh.

But, it’s another challenge for Sharp and his girls to overcome.

“Just not having the normal off season and having players playing multiple sports at once has been hard,” Sharp said. “We are almost using this as a summer league. Just giving these kids an opportunity to play because we have kids missing, due to COVID and other reasons, so we are not as stressed on the sideline because we understand on the sideline, but, overall, we are happy to play.”