Big second half propels Golden Valley girls past Merced

Matt Thissen kept his halftime speech short. The Golden Valley High girls basketball coach had his players on the court more than 5 minutes before the start of the third quarter.

After a poor-shooting first half, Thissen wanted his girls to get as many shots up as they could before play resumed.

The Cougars scored the first nine points of the second half and led the rest of the way as they defeated crosstown-rival Merced 46-32 on Thursday, their eighth consecutive win, and improved to 18-4 overall and 5-0 in the Central California Conference.

“We weren’t as patient as we’d like to be,” said Thissen, whose team shot 6 for 26 in the first half. “We let the emotions of playing your rival affect us. We needed to take a deep breath and relax. We had a half to remember how to put the ball in the basket.”

Stephanie Moore got the Cougars started with a three-pointer. She later scored a basket after a steal and then hit a left-handed runner in the lane to extend the lead to 24-17. Golden Valley outscored Merced 31-15 in the second half.

“Our defense was pretty good the whole game, but it was really good in the third quarter, holding them to three points,” said Moore, who finished with 22 points, 11 rebounds and five steals. “We started taking away everything defensively and we were more patient with the ball.”

Meanwhile, Merced (14-8, 2-3) helped the Cougars’ defense in the second half by getting away from what worked in the first half.

The Bears stopped moving the ball around and settled for a lot of one-on-one basketball. As a result, they shot 1 for 12 in the third quarter.

“(Golden Valley) played great defense, but we made a lot of bad decisions,” Merced coach Rob Pierce said. “We got impatient. We kind of lost trust in each other. That was one of our main downfalls in the second half. We got away from the game plan, which was to be patient and move the ball around.”

The Bears still had a chance after Lexi Thompson (16 points) and Jordan Pierce each drained three-pointers to cut the lead to 32-26 with 5:27 left.

However, the Cougars responded with a 14-0 run with Delia Moore and Molly Vang making back-to-back threes. Kayla Commons scored two baskets in the paint to help put the game away.

Commons and Abbee Croninger scored a total of eight points, but they combined for 20 rebounds, with Croninger pulling down 12.

Stephanie Moore also stopped shooting three-point shots and attacked the paint, scoring 13 second-half points.

“You can’t make them if you’re not shooting them, but if the threes aren’t falling, you need to try something else,” she said. “You can either pass to someone else or attack the gaps.”

The win sets up a showdown on Tuesday for Golden Valley at Pitman, which is 4-1 in the CCC after a 41-40 win over Turlock on Thursday.

“Pitman has beaten the same teams we’ve beaten and they’ve put up a fight in those games,” Moore said. “It’s a really important game for us. We have to come out and expect Pitman to play their best game.”

This story was originally published January 21, 2016 at 10:44 PM with the headline "Big second half propels Golden Valley girls past Merced."