Several times this season the Maricopa High school girls’ basketball team has played well in defeat against very strong competition.
Thursday night at the MHS Gym was not one of those games.
Struggling throughout, the Rams managed a 47-44 win over Phoenix Horizon Honors, but the effort didn’t please head coach Jenn Miller who has seen her team have a tough time in the last few games with weaker opponents, but still come away with victories.
“The last few games, even though we’ve won them, none of them have been a very satisfying victory,” Miller said. “The girls weren’t even happy with this one.”
It was the second win in three nights against Horizon. The Rams took a 76-62 victory on the road Tuesday. The streak has left MHS with a 16-9 record with three games to play.
Thursday Maricopa managed to take a 22-15 lead early in the second quarter, but was unable to put the game out of reach. The Eagles’ Gina Garvey canned five 3-pointers in the opening half, while teammate GraceMarie Schian added two more, leaving MHS with just a 30-28 halftime margin.
Although MHS stifled the Horizon perimeter shooting in the second half, the Eagles made no 3-pointers, but still managed to stay close.
“The defense we ran in the second half to stop their outside shooting really did work,” Miller said. However, she wasn’t happy with the overall effort.
“We’re a team that likes to have the lead and we didn’t have it. Our defense was lazy. They backed off, they weren’t aggressive.”
Still, Maricopa held on at the end.Although it scored only four points in the final period, two were huge. A layup by Gretchen Lauterbach with 44 seconds remaining pushed the Rams’ lead to 47-44, and Maricopa forced several turnovers in the closing seconds to nail down the win.
Jahnei Johnson paced MHS with 17 points, including three, 3-pointers she hit in the first half to help counter the Eagles’ long-range shooting. Derona Mitchell added 15 points, 11 in the first 16 minutes. Garvey finished with 17 and Megan Burtraw had 14 for Horizon.
On Tuesday, in the road win over the Eagles, Johnson and Mitchell scored 16 each, while Brianna Estrada added 11 and Paige Ellis and Cecily Peters contributed eight apiece.
The Rams are back on the road Friday, visiting 11-th ranked, Division I, Desert Vista at 7 p.m.
