Dickerson’s dominance powers Rams past Coronado

Julia Dickerson scored 20 points and grabbed 11 rebounds to lead the Maricopa girls basketball team to a 59-45 victory over visiting Scottsdale Coronado on Tuesday night.

Dickerson, a junior forward, tallied eight of her points during the third quarter, when the Rams increased a 28-18 halftime lead to as many as 20 points at 46-26.

“There aren’t many teams that are going to have an answer for Julia,” Maricopa coach Jennifer Miller said about Dickerson, who also passed the ball to her teammates for several fast-break layups.

Derona Mitchell finished with 14 points and eight rebounds for the Rams, who also got seven points and nine rebounds from Morgan Rainey along with seven points and seven rebounds from Jahnei Johnson.

“It’s the same as it always is – make the shots in the paint, box out when you rebound, make good passes and talk on defense,” Miller said. “We did most of those most of the time. I think that was the difference in the game.”

Senior guard Amber Webster led Coronado with 15 points and eight rebounds, but Miller said that the Rams defended her effectively.

“The first time we played them (a 49-46 win for the Rams at Coronado on Dec. 2), she just lit us up,” Miller said. “So we decided we were going to make the rest of the team beat us. We just rotated the guards out on her, denied the pass, frustrated her a little bit. Our guards did a great job rotating through and frustrating her.”

The Rams went ahead to stay at 4-2 on a drive to the basket by Mitchell. After a field goal by Dickerson made it 11-7 at the end of the first quarter, Rainey converted two layups and a putback to increase the Maricopa advantage to 17-9 with 6:25 remaining before halftime.

A layup by Mitchell off of an assist by Dickerson with 1:45 left in the second quarter gave the Rams their first double-digit lead at 25-15. Following a three-pointer by Webster that reduced Coronado’s deficit to 25-18, the Rams answered with a triple from the left corner by Brianna Estrada with one second remaining before the intermission.

After Coronado’s Desiree Pruneda opened the third quarter with a three-pointer, the Rams scored 10 straight points to pull ahead 38-21. Dickerson scored four points during the sequence. Later in the third, she added four more as Maricopa put the game out of reach.

In earning their second consecutive victory, the Rams improved to 12-9 overall, 6-6 in games that count in the AIA power rankings for Class 4A-II, and 4-5 in the 4A-II East Sky Region.

Coronado fell to 2-10 in power-point games and 1-8 in the East Sky Region.