Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
Serving Clovis, Portales and the Surrounding Communities
CLOVIS — It didn’t take long for Melrose’s girls to turn a close game into a runaway on Friday night.
The quick, defense-minded Lady Buffs caused havoc for Clovis Christian, tipping away numerous balls and turning them into points on the other end en route to a 59-39 District 6-1A win at the CCS gym.
Senior forward Hailey Martin led Melrose (3-0, 2-0 district) with 16 points, while freshman guard Graci Odom had 12 and sophomore guard Isabelle Sena 11.
The Lady Eagles (2-3, 1-3 district) opened a 7-2 lead before Melrose closed to within a point at the quarter. CCS took its final lead at 11-9 on a basket by sophomore guard Sofia De Groot with 6:35 left in the half, then went nearly eight minutes without scoring as the Lady Buffs tallied 16 consecutive points.
Melrose (3-0, 2-0), which posted a 27-point third quarter after leading 18-11 at halftime, took control over the middle two stanzas when it harassed the Lady Eagles into 17 turnovers.
“They did a good job of forcing turnovers; a lot of credit goes to those guys,” CCS coach Matt Chandler said of the Lady Buffs. “We had a couple of players come off the bench and give us some scoring tonight. We’ve just got to take care of the ball a little better.
“We were just coming off two solid wins (over San Jon and at Dora). We’ve got some good things going on.”
Senior post Lola De Groot, who fashioned a triple-double against San Jon earlier in the week, posted her fourth double-double of the season with 20 points and 12 rebounds for CCS, but Melrose made her work hard to get them.
“We came out a little slow; we didn’t shoot the ball very well (early),” Lady Buffs coach Caleb King said. “We slowed down on offense a little and hit a couple, and we got our confidence up.”
At the end of the day, though, it was defense which provided the big lift.
“Our defense was good pretty much the entire game,” King said. “With a big, tall team like that, you want to make it a transition game. If we just let them go inside, they’re too tall to be able to cover them.”
