Atwater girls basketball falls prey to Elk Grove trap

Like the open maw of a Venus flytrap, the Elk Grove High School girls basketball team’s 2-3 zone patiently waited.

The Thundering Herd did its best to disrupt Atwater with active hands in the passing lanes, but the second the ball was passed into the heart of the zone, the trap snapped shut.

Anytime a Falcons player caught the ball within the three-point arc, she was immediately pounced upon by two Elk Grove players. And more often than not, Atwater coughed up the ball to a stronger, more athletic, more aggressive opponent.

The third-seeded Herd forced 29 turnovers – usually just taking the ball out of Atwater’s hands – and turned more than half of them into easy transition buckets as they cruised into the second round of the Sac-Joaquin Section Division II playoffs with a 70-32 victory Tuesday night.

“Honestly, I thought we were prepared coming into the game, but I guess that kind of pressure is tough to emulate in practice if you haven’t experienced it,” Falcons coach J.R. Davis said. “We couldn’t match the way they shot the ball from the outside; then, you throw in all the turnovers, and we never gave ourselves much of a chance.”

It wasn’t a bad start for 14th-seeded Atwater (18-9) on the road. The Falcons used quick hands to force seven turnovers of their own, and Heaven Mazon got hot early, scoring seven of her team-high nine points in the opening quarter.

The only real problem was that Elk Grove (19-9) seldom missed when it held onto the ball. Mira Shulman scored seven points in the first quarter, and the Herd made 9 of 15 shots to lead 20-13.

“Their shooters were very impressive,” Davis said. “They just kept knocking down shots. Usually, a team gives you a window in which you can turn things around. They never did.”

Sharpshooter Madison Wong (15 points) picked up where Shulman (game-high 25 points) left off, draining three three-pointers in the second quarter. Paiton Demps (18 points) scored seven points in the second quarter, and Elk Grove closed with a 12-0 run to take a 40-18 halftime lead.

The Herd wasn’t done, extending the run to 26 unanswered with a 14-0 start to the third quarter that erased any hope of a comeback bid.

“I feel like we knew what to expect from watching film,” said senior Brittany Massa, who finished her high school career with six points and seven rebounds. “They have a tight 2-3 zone, and we just kept trying to force it. The bulk of our points come from me, Heaven and Alondra (Ponce) down low, and we were so focused on trying to get the ball down there, we weren’t very smart about how we did it.

“They were a good team, and it seemed like every time we made a mistake, they made us pay. We needed three more quarters like the first one, but we were never that team again.”

This story was originally published February 23, 2016 at 10:38 PM with the headline "Atwater girls basketball falls prey to Elk Grove trap."