Clovis girls split versus Texas teams

CLOVIS - Call it a mixed bag for the Clovis girls basketball team after the Lady Wildcats' busy first week of home games.

Tuesday's home opener at Rock Staubus Gymnasium ended with a 58-38 victory over Lubbock Estacado. Friday's game at the Rock ended with a tight but ultimately disappointing 44-40 loss to Amarillo's Randall, part of the Foxy's Drive-In Shootout.

Those games, added to Clovis' 38-27 season-opening loss at Cleveland Nov. 26, had the Lady Wildcats at 1-2 three games into the new season as of Friday night. And had Clovis head coach Jeff Reed thinking about what was and what could be.

"We played our butts off tonight," Reed said Friday night from his office at Staubus Gym. "We got after it defensively, we fought, we scrambled, we rebounded, we did so many great things. I love the attitude and I love the effort that these girls gave tonight. And I want them to be able to win so badly when they put that kind of effort out there that they did tonight. Because they deserve it."

Randall head coach Ronnie Glenn was impressed with the Lady Wildcats that her own team had just played.

"Clovis is a great team; Jeff does an awesome job," Glenn said. "When we come out here we know we're going to play a really solid team, which is always nice."

Among the bright spots of Friday night's loss was Clovis storming back from a 38-33 deficit late in the fourth quarter to forge a 40-all tie with less than 20 seconds remaining. The Lady 'Cats had shrunk the deficit to 40-37, and had the ball when the inbounds pass came to senior guard Annabelle Martinez, who dribbled around the circle, created an open spot for herself in the right corner, and buried a game-tying three-pointer.

Randall, though, scored the game's last four points, with a Clovis turnover in between, to ice it.

Martinez led all scorers with 16 points, and Hanna Nussbaumer added 10 points for the Lady 'Cats, with their combined total accounting for 65 percent of the team's offense. Alandra Romero had seven, all in the second half, but Reed thought it could have been more if she hadn't found her way into foul trouble during the first.

"We really need her to be a scorer," Reed said. "The second half she did a heck of a job, had seven points. If we balance that out into two halves, she could've ended up with 14."

And, according to Reed, Clovis needs that extra scoring to have a successful season.

"So far this year we've held opponents to 38, 38 and 44. We're going to have a chance to win games if we hold people to 38, 38 and 44," Reed said. "You wouldn't think we would be 1-2, but the problem is, we scored 27 and 40 in those two losses. We've got to find a way to put the ball in the hole a little bit better and handle the ball in clutch situations a little bit better. If we do that, we're going to start being a heck of a team."

A night of firsts

Tuesday night was Clovis' first home game of the season, which ended with the Lady Wildcats' first victory of the season, a 20-point rout of Estacado.

Thanks to three players hitting double figures - Aydan Everett with 13 points, Martinez with 12 and Nussbaumer with 11 - Clovis was able to pull away for the victory.

"It was a good win," Reed said. "Any time we get a win, we'll take it. We shot the ball better Tuesday, but of course, Lubbock Estacado didn't play the kind of defense that Randall played tonight. And so we had a lot more open looks Tuesday night, we had deep threes, and we played fairly good defense. They were pretty quick, but we held them to 38 points."

As he looked ahead to Saturday night's game against Amarillo's Palo Duro at the Rock, Reed saw an opportunity for his team to progress. Overall, it's been a season of challenges early, but also a season that seems to hold promise.

"If we can add a little more discipline to it and start settling down and putting the ball in the hole," Reed said, "I think we have a chance to make the playoffs this year."