Photos by Ray Hamill/HumboldtSports.com – Raymi Sharp in action for the Tigers on Tuesday night.
A rollercoaster season for the Arcata Tigers came to an end on Tuesday night, as they fell 53-36 to Summit Shasta in the opening round of the state playoffs at Arcata High.
The Black Bears caught the Tigers off guard with their quickness early in the game and opened up an 19-point lead midway through the third quarter.
But with their season on the line, the Arcata girls battled back to make a game of it, cutting the deficit to just five points in the fourth quarter.
The visitors, however, closed out strong to seal the win and advance to the NorCal quarterfinals.
“I was really concerned about their quickness,” Arcata head coach Doug Oliveira said. “They’re a well-coached, disciplined basketball team. But I was really proud of our girls for making a run back against a team like that.”
Melanie Luh continued her impressive late-season form with a team-high 14 points for the Tigers, who closed out the season 14-13.
Nora Talty also had a good game and helped spark the late rally on her way to 13 points, while Caroline Dieker did a good job rebounding the ball.
“Obviously we’re really disappointed, but any time you get to play in the state tournament it’s a good thing,” Oliveira said. “The seniors were seniors tonight.”
Trailing 38-19 with three minutes remaining in the third quarter, the Arcata girls went on a 17-3 run to cut the deficit to five with six minutes still remaining in the game.
Unfortunately for the Tigers, however, ultimately it was too big a gap to overturn.
“We just haven’t faced that quickness all season,” Oliveira said.
As for the season, it was certainly up and down, but the Arcata girls always seemed to answer the call whenever their season was on the line.
After failing to qualify for the Dick Niclai Tournament, they posted back-to-back North Coast Section playoff wins to qualify for the state tournament, including a very impressive one-point win over Del Norte in Crescent City.
“It was quite a rollercoaster,” Oliveira said. “We won games when we needed to early in the season to put us in position to get the seed we got.
“And then late in the year, we went up to Crescent City and won, and that’s really difficult to do, and then we went to St. Bernard’s and won. We came back at the end of the year.”
Categories: Arcata, Basketball
[“We just haven’t faced that quickness all season,” Oliveira said.]
In soccer, a player from down south said the same thing about local high school soccer teams in playoffs.
Maybe up here, the schools need better coaches, or not be so coddling of student athletes when coaches demand athletes be more serious, work harder, do as reasonably instructed…
Letting coaches remove a player (student-athlete) from the classroom (team) for being a physical/mental distraction, promote another student athlete… like major league baseball, demote those who fall behind in learning, effort, applying sports studies…
High School coaches only benefit when youth leagues have good coaches… why… because sports is always dictated by the athletes… coaches are only as good as the athletes they have… which is why the best coaches can take an ensemble, a cast, a crew, a team of lesser athletes, who want it badly enough, they’ll practice the lights out as instructed, to be the best, by training into being the best…
…best teams also tend to have higher GPA students… those who can think, understand schematics, tactics, formations, plays, etc… but also have those athletes capable to “help others get it, when they are not getting it”.
Good season, no disrespect, just an observation of other people’s “game-speed comments” after a H-DNL team loses a playoff game. Maybe it’s the H-DNL culture… to be slower…